Gods Behaving Badly » (Reprint)

Marie Phillips was born in London in 1976. She studied anthropology at CambridgeUniversity and worked as a researcher at the BBC. More recently she worked as an independent bookseller while writing Gods Behaving Badly.

The Greek gods inadvertently wreak havoc on the mortal world in this hilarious debut novel set in modern-day London.Being immortal isn't all it's cracked up to be. Life's hard for a Greek god in the 21st century: nobody believes in you any more, even your own family doesn't respect you, and you're stuck in a dilapidated hovel in North London with too many siblings and not enough hot water. For Artemis (goddess of hunting, professional dog walker), Aphrodite (goddess of beauty, telephone sex operator) and Apollo (god of the sun, TV psychic) there's no way out... Until a meek cleaning lady and her would-be boyfriend come into their lives (an arrival orchestrated by a reluctant Eros, god of love) and turn the world literally upside down.

The New York Times - Alexandra Jacobs

As it traces Neil and Alice's sweet and predictable little love plot, Phillips's novel sometimes threatens to descend as well, into something like bathos. But for the most part her nonchalant transposition of the ancients into post-postmodern life is seamless, amusing and blessedly unpretentious.