Psyche in a Dress is a modern retelling of some of the familiar stories from Greek Mythology. It begins very similar to the story of Cupid (Eros) and Psyche – Eros spends every night with Psyche, but never lets her see him. One night, after being urged on by her sisters, Psyche lights a candle to see what Eros looks like, and wakes him by dripping wax on him. Eros flees, and Psyche undertakes a journey to get him back. Block’s story deviates for a while, but eventually returns back to the myth when Psyche is working for Athena, trying to win Athena’s son back. Athena isn’t the nicest of people to work for, and gives Psyche all kinds of tasks to do before she is finally reunited with Eros. (I was impressed that Block even included ants helping Psyche with her work!)

As mentioned above, this retelling does deviate from the real myth, in that on Psyche’s journey in Block’s story, Psyche becomes different mythological characters, and has relationships with other characters from mythology (she is Narcissus’ Echo for a while, Orpheus’ Eurydice and Hades’ Persephone) before being reunited with Eros. It was fun to see how Block worked in all those myths into one story.

My friend Sabrina is a big Francesca Lia Block fan, and has mentioned to me a couple of times that I should read something she’s written. Like the majority of recs that I get, it took me a while to actually get one of her books… and I have to say, now, that I really thoroughly regret that it took me this long.

This book was so different than any YA and most mythology that I’ve read, and it was quite refreshing to read something different. While I found the feminism aspect of the writing to be a little bit preachy, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. I loved how the main character started out as Psyche, and by the end of the book she’s refering to herself as Demeter.

I’m not normally one for poetry or free verse or whatever form this book was written in, but it flowed really well; I found that I followed it easily, and my mind didn’t wander off (which is, sadly, often the case when I read stuff similar to this). Maybe part of the reason is that two of my favourite greek myths were worked into this book – the story of Psyche and Eros, and the story of Persephone and Hades. (I’m now wanting to go and reread one of my Greek mythology books.)