Monday, April 18, 2016
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Review of the Week: The Owl Goddess by Jenny Twist (@JennyTwist1)
Anyone who has followed my blog will know what enormous respect I have for author Jenny Twist, whose first novel Domingo's Angel still sits at the top of my favourite stories ever. She's produced many short stories since then, but only one other novel, All in the Mind. Now at last, the long-awaited third novel has arrived. Here is my review of it:
The Owl Goddess
Jenny
Twist was born in York and brought up in the West Yorkshire mill town of
Heckmondwike, the eldest grandchild of a huge extended family.
I confess here and now to being a fully signed-up member of
author Jenny Twist’s fan club.
Everything she writes is a delight to read, so when I received an ARC of
her latest story, I knew I was in for a pleasurable read. The Owl
Goddess is quite a departure from her usual genres, and I admit to having mixed
feelings at first, but these quickly disappeared when I started reading.
I was immersed from the start in this innovative mixture of gods
and heroes from Greek myths hurtled into the unknown by a mishap in space to
deal with a whole set of new problems posed by a new environment that included
minor deities and heroes. It made for a
very entertaining mix and plenty of excitement from the very first page. When Twist throws the most famous gods and
heroes such as Zeus, Athena, Prometheus, Pandora, Atlas, Apollo, Artemis and
all the rest into a big modern melting pot, you have to expect the
unexpected! But the result is
delightful.
The sympathetic—and often amusing—way the deities are
characterised and humanised is inspired.
Each one keeps his/her recognisable traits from the ancient stories, but
takes on more human aspects to account for some of their quirks and
idiosyncrasies. I especially enjoyed the
strong female deities taking ownership of their traditional roles and adding
their own personal, feminine touches.
The use of modern colloquialisms made them accessible,
endearing and highly entertaining. I
loved the portrayal of the three feisty ‘A’ females: Artemis, Aphrodite and
Athena. They kept the action moving
forward in a very human way as well as milking every opportunity to add humour
and interest to the story through their unique personalities. Permeating their stories is a rather poignant,
coming of age love story to which just about anyone of any age can relate.
All in all, I think this is an inspired story, engrossing,
entertaining and beautifully written. Jenny
Twist is a great story-teller and I can see this having an appeal to all ages
as a new way to visit classical mythology in a novel, informative and engaging
way.
No prizes for guessing how many cute cats I award this!
About the Author:
Jenny
Twist was born in York and brought up in the West Yorkshire mill town of
Heckmondwike, the eldest grandchild of a huge extended family.
She
left school at fifteen and went to work in an asbestos factory. After working
in various jobs, including bacon-packer and escapologist’s assistant (she was
The Lovely Tanya), she returned to full-time education and did a BA in history,
at Manchester and post-graduate studies at Oxford.
She stayed in Oxford working as a
recruitment consultant for many years and it was there that she met and married
her husband, Vic.
In 2001 they retired and moved to
Southern Spain where they live with their rather eccentric dog and cat. Besides
writing, she enjoys reading, knitting and attempting to do fiendishly difficult
logic puzzles.
She has written two novels - Domingo’s Angel – a love story set in
Franco’s Spain and harking back to the Spanish Civil War and beyond - and Allin the Mind – a contemporary novel
about an old woman who mysteriously begins to get younger
She has contributed short stories to
many other anthologies, of which two – Doppelganger
and Uncle Vernon have been released
as short ebooks.
Other works include the Mantequero series:
novellas about a Spanish mythological figure, and An Open Letter to Stephen King & Other Essays, a compilation of
non-fiction essays and articles.
Her new novella, The Minstrel Boy, will be published in
the anthology Letters from Europe in
the spring of 2016.
Facebook Author Page
Amazon Author Page
Twitter: @JennyTwist1
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