Cupid: A Tale of Love and Desire (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: West Wind, Brother Sun, South Wind (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Lester (Time's Memory) retells the tale of Cupid and Psyche, with appearances by some highly appealing lesser Greek and Roman characters, such as Oizys, goddess of pain, and the highly likeable Favonius, the West Wind, along with his other wind counterparts. Psyche comes across as especially sympathetic; her kindness is just as striking as her beauty. And even those familiar with the tale may be surprised at just how vindictive Psyche's jealous sisters can be, as they prompt Psyche to break her promise to Cupid (Cupid, who comes to Psyche only under cover of darkness, asks her to vow never to gaze upon his face or risk losing him forever). Unfortunately, the vague persona of the omniscient narrator here detracts from the pace and poetic details of the tale. The narrator reveals only tidbits of information about himself; for instance as he watches Psyche's wedding procession, he notes, "This reminds me of my weddings. At all six of them, the bride cried." He also conjures a rather contentious relationship with "the story," as when he raises the question of how it is that Psyche never detected Cupid's wings in all their nights of lovemaking: "I asked the story about it. The story scratched its head and looked very confused." Still, for fans of romance and mythology, this is highly entertaining. Lester casts the two protagonists as adolescents coming of age through the trials and ultimate triumph of their love. Ages 12-up. (Jan.)
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From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up—Psyche is a princess who is so lovely that people come to worship her instead of Venus, the goddess of love. When Venus hears that she has been usurped, she sends her son, Cupid, to shoot Psyche with one of his love-tipped arrows. However, once Cupid sees Psyche, he falls hopelessly in love. Not long after their clandestine marriage, Psyche's jealous sisters come to visit and plant a seed of doubt about her husband's identity, and the new bride's actions drive Cupid away. Her chance to redeem herself comes when Venus gives her a series of impossible tasks that she must complete to prove her love. As this tale begins, the style is humorous and promises a new and clever version of the myth, but the comedy peters out about halfway through. Although Lester explores the motivations and personalities of the players and introduces a few new gods and goddesses, the characters fall flat, and the final product is unimaginative. This retelling is interspersed with a self-conscious contemporary narrative that would work better as part of an orally told story. The novel does not hold up to Lester's masterful standard. It might be a good introduction for someone unfamiliar with the traditional myth and could be useful in a classroom, but those looking for an innovative retelling should look at Francesca Lia Block's Psyche in a Dress (HarperCollins, 2006) instead.—Heather M. Campbell, Philip S. Miller Library, Castle Rock, CO
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books; 1 edition (January 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015202056X
• ISBN-13: 978-0152020569
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #766,821 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, December 23, 2006

By	TeensReadToo.com "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

Everybody knows who Cupid is, right? He's the chubby little guy in diapers, who shoots people with arrows and makes them fall in love. Or at least that's how we picture him. I assume he probably wore diapers at some point, but this isn't that story. If you've ever read or studied any mythology, you know that gods were believed to be a lot like people. They made mistakes, broke the rules, did stupid things, and weren't always nice. This IS that story.

Though he is the title character, this story doesn't start with him. It all begins with a beautiful girl named Psyche. Actually, she's more than beautiful. Words don't exist to describe her beauty. Ask the letters, because they tried. Psyche is so amazing to behold that all of the people in the kingdom stop what they're doing to catch a glimpse of her on her afternoon walk. Her father, the king, fearing the economic failure of his country, limits her walks. As with most of the best laid plans, this one backfires. People quit working entirely to hang out by the castle waiting for the next time Psyche leaves. Then people from other kingdoms start to relocate, all to see this incredible creature.

Now normally the affairs of humans don't interest the gods. However, Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, gets a little feisty when her temples are being neglected. When she finds out that there is a human who is possibly more beautiful than she is and is stealing her attention... Let's just say the goddess of love is not immune to jealousy. And, being a goddess, she is in a position to cause some trouble. Enter Cupid, son of Venus, sent down to stir up some trouble.

Cupid has never been in love. Cupid gets entertainment by making unlikely people fall in love, by making happy couples fall into hate, making people fall in love with people who are already in love with other people, and sometimes making people fall in love with things that aren't people at all. Cupid's really not all that great of a guy sometimes. Venus sends him to earth to take care of Psyche. Except Cupid falls in love with Psyche. That's when the real trouble starts.

This is a great story, and worth being retold in any case. This particular retelling had me laughing hysterically. The Story and the Narrator are constantly disagreeing over which points are important enough to include in the tale. They discuss and fight at random intervals, until the Story gets involved in hearing the Narrarator's version of itself. It's hilarious!

If mythology had been available in this form when I was studying it, I definitely wouldn't have gotten a "D."

Reviewed by: Carrie Spellman

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: CUPID, April 6, 2007

By	Richie Partington "http://richiespicks.com" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"Every day around the time people's shadows snuck beneath their feet to get out of the sun, the tall wooden doors to the palace grounds swung open, and Psyche came out to take her daily walk. Men, women, children, and all the creatures stopped what they were doing to look at her. Birds flying by would see Psyche, stop flapping their wings, and fall to the ground. Ants would be toting crumbs which, to them, were as big as China. They could not see anything of Psyche except a sixteenth of an inch of her big toenail, but that was enough for them to be so overcome by her beauty that they dropped their crumbs and just stared."

"Had it been another day
I might have looked the other way
And I'd have never been aware
But as it is I'll dream of her tonight"
-- Lennon and McCartney, I've Just Seen a Face

Julius Lester's irreverent, storyteller's version of the tale of Cupid and Psyche for adolescents is a telling that is in equal parts thoroughly entertaining and exceptionally meaningful to readers young and old. As he states in his author note:

"The experience of love is the most central and profound of our lives. Yet we are given no instruction in the ways of love. Popular music and movies are our primary sources for what we think love is and should be, and as entertaining as these media are, the views of love they present are more often expressions of sentimentality instead of representations of the very hard realities of what it means to be human and what the act of loving presents us with."

"Love is careless in its choosing - sweeping over cross a baby
Love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion
Inspirations have I none - just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love - and love is not loving"
-- David Bowie, Soul Love

In a version for today's readers, Psyche and Cupid are characters with whom we can relate. The first thing we hear out of Psyche's mouth is her telling her father that she doesn't appreciate his deciding what she can do and when she can do it. Meanwhile, Cupid, a hunk with wings, is totally under the thumb of his mom Venus. But that, of course, begins to change after jealous Mom sends Cupid to deal with the problem of Psyche's attracting all of that attention and, Cupid gets an eyeful of what has been making the birds fall out of the sky:

"Cupid still could not move, which is not an uncommon response in the presence of beauty. Even gods and goddesses are not exempt from beauty's forbidding and terrifying power. Let there be no mistake: Cupid was afraid. Perhaps more than any of the deities on Olympus, he was the one always in control of himself. Let the other deities entrap themselves in human emotions, but he knew better. And so it was until he saw Psyche.

"Now standing there, looking at her, for the first time in his eternal life Cupid faced a choice: maintain control and leave Psyche, or submit to his desire for her and never be wholly in control of his life ever again. (And for him, ever was not a figure of speech.)

"There come moments in each of our journeys when we can no longer continue our lives as they are. But neither can we see what we will become. We either go forward, with no idea of where we are going or what we are doing, or we remain as we are -- and begin to die, though we do not realize that is the choice we have made. This is why love is such a fearful undertaking, and why, for so many women especially, the wedding day is fraught with terror and tears. Why do people voluntarily agree to relinquish a degree of control over their lives and pledge themselves to take into consideration the needs, desires, and shortcomings of another for the rest of their lives?"

Julius Lester has spent much of his writing career taking on the responsibility for passing along stories that have been previously conveyed down through the generations. A couple of years ago, in his autobiographic, ON WRITING FOR CHILDREN & OTHER PEOPLE, he explained:

"Traditional folktales taught the adults and children of a group how to live, what kinds of behavior to emulate, and what kinds to avoid so they could be reasonably assured of having a life approved by the deities. Folktales recorded the psychic history of a group by evoking the past, affirming the present, and showing the way to the future.

"Such tales did not have individual authors. Though they may have been created by especially gifted people within the group, tales were only passed from one generation to the next because they fulfilled a need of the group. Today the oral tradition has been replaced by mass media and children's books have become the conservators of the oral tradition.

"This is, of course, a paradox. Stories from the oral tradition cease to be oral once they are written down. When confined to the page they become literature, the product of a single mind, one person's skill with words and silence. Traditional stories, however, come from a community and are shaped and reshaped by all who tell them and hear them. Literature exists on the page where it cannot be changed. Stories are elastic and are created anew on the tongue of each teller.

"The nature of our society is inimical to storytelling because we no longer live in cohesive communities. We no longer educate each other with stories in which our joys and sorrows are refashioned into an art that serves as a mirror for the entire community. The question becomes then: How can one fit the marvelous elasticity of a story onto the page without injuring the story? It is possible only if one refuses to regard the page as the story's final destination, an exalted end. The page is merely the means to return stories to the mouths and tongues of anyone who wishes to tell them."

As he has previously done with other retellings, the author succeeds in differentiating between the story and the storyteller by creating a lively and memorable personality for his storytelling narrator. Through frequent asides, imagery, and allusions, the voice of the storyteller makes us aware as readers that there is someone from our own time telling us this traditional story, someone who is interjecting a lot of humor, relevance, and wisdom into that telling. Through his employing this voice, Julius Lester makes this a tale for today.

Teens with attitudes about the irrelevance of Greek and Roman gods to their high-tech Twenty-first Century lives will find themselves doing a serious one-eighty in their thinking if and when they are fortunate enough to be turned on to this outstanding story and guide to the meaning of the verb 'to love.'

3.0 out of 5 stars Cupid and Psyche's tale, November 22, 2007

By	Kim Baccellia, YA author "Kim" (Southern California) - See all my reviews

Cupid is the God of love and one who's always up to mischief. When his mother, Venus, asks him to use one of his arrows to make a woman fall in love with something hideous, he's up to the task. That's until he sees Psyche, a princess who is rumored to be more beautiful than Venus. Now Cupid finds out how hard it is to love someone. Someone his mother not only doesn't care for but wants to be destroyed. Cupid is torn on whether he should obey his mother or stay with the woman he loves.

This is a different twist to the Cupid story. I found it revealing to look inside the mind of Cupid, especially when he falls under the spell of a beautiful mortal. The only thing taking away from this otherwise interesting tale was the narrator's comments. I wanted less of the interruptions and more of the tale. Otherwise I found the whole twist of Cupid falling in love refreshing from the usual tales of the God of love.