Frenzy [Paperback]

What transpires inside the mind of a god? Specifically, inside the mind of Dionysos, Greek god of wine, pleasure and eroticism? Everett's playful novel attempts to answer that question, weaving together the god's memories as narrated by Vlepo, Dionysos's mortal assistant and constant companion. Abandoning the American West of books such as Watershed and The Big Picture, the prolific novelist brings his sharp eye for the mutability of identity, the clash of myth and culture, and an offbeat humor, to this iconoclastic study in Greek mythology. Curious to understand his own experiences, Dionysos sends Vlepo into the "temporal soup" of his own godly memories, where he observes his master's experiences from different perspectives, such as that of a tick on the god's skull. Leaping through time and space with ease, Vlepo revisits events like Zeus's seduction of Semele, Dionysos's mother, and Zeus's subsequent revelation of his godhood, during which he incinerates Semele with his brilliance. Elsewhere, Vlepo observes the tragic death of Eurydice, and Orpheus's journey to Hades in an attempt to reclaim her. But the myth that shapes the book, is that of Agave, daughter of Kadmos and sister of Semele. Having slandered Semele and suggested that Zeus was not Dionysos's father, Agave eventually goes mad, killing her son, Pentheus. The choppiness of the narrative, however, prevents any real tension and saps the book's effectiveness. By Frenzy's end, the mind of this turbulent god remains as unknowable as in the beginning.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Remember the simulated Bacchanalian frenzy of Donna Tartt's Secret History (LJ 9/1/92)? Here's the real thing, the story of the half-man, half-god Dionysus, who inspires a wild devotion but, because of his divinity, is unable to experience it. Thus, he transforms and re-transforms his faithful follower, Vlepo, a sort of executive assistant, into a woman, now a flea, now a river, now a vulture?to experience and understand the material world by proxy. Billed as comic, Everett's (Watershed, LJ 3/15/96) novel is in fact more often steeped in a pensive sadness that is reflected in the style, though in the more experimental passages, Everett can get pretty purple (e.g., "Do you not see the puissance of this loving?"). An interesting book, but, owing to its quasi-experimental nature and arcane themes, mostly suited to large fiction collections.?Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Everett weaves a strange, lyric tale of fate and hubris set in ancient Greece. Vlepo tells the story of him and master, Dionysus, as the two come to the city of Thebes on a mission Vlepo can't quite figure out. Dionysus uses Vlepo to enter the consciousness of numerous people, always witnessing and experiencing for his inquisitive master. And there's much to experience. All of Thebes' women have left the city. A young king attempts to set things aright, while his aged grandfather plots against him. Meanwhile, Vlepo travels into the minds of many others (in a tour de force example of multiple points of view), slowly beginning to realize the limitations placed on his master: the god of the Bacchanalia, of chaos and libido, Dionysus is half-man, half-deity, and doomed to die. Very different from Everett's last offering, God's Country (1994), but no less engrossing. Brian McCombie

Everett, author of uneven, ambitious fiction in modern settings (Watershed, p. 244, etc.), tries something very different this time: a reworking of chunks of Greek mythology, centered on the moody figure of the god/man Dionysos (a.k.a. Bakkhos), mixing poetic narration and monologues with ironic, contemporary-sounding dialogue. The novel begins as wandering Dionysos, a kind of missionary of ecstatic anarchy, arrives in Thebes with his corps of dancing, singing Maenads--wine-crazed women whose sensual carryings-on mesmerize the townfolk and undermine the authority of young King Pentheus (who doesn't know that Dionysos is his cousin). Also with Dionysos is his assistant, Vlepo, who can magically enter anyone's mind or body, thus generating interior monologues from a slew of characters: insecure, arrogant Pentheus, whose doom is sealed by his refusal to acknowledge Dionysos' godhood; Kadmos, Pentheus' grandfather, who regrets abdicating and bemoans the royal failings of the ``stupid young twit''; Pentheus' man-hating mother Agave, a frenzied convert to the brutal Bakkhic revels; blind seer Tiresias, beaten by the Maenads; and the wild women themselves, in various stages of orgasmic bliss. And Everett also peppers the fragmented narrative with episodes from Dionysos' past and from other myths, including the stories of Orpheus (bloodily murdered by the Maenads), and the Minotaur's sister Ariadne (comforted by Dionysos after Theseus seduces and abandons her). Readers intimately familiar with the source material here may be intrigued by Everett's interweaving of legends and intermittently engaged by his lyrical yet playful approach. Others, however, will find this a strained, rather precious exercise with grandiose themes--the connection between sensuality and brutality, the nature of mortality, etc.--touched upon rather than explored. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.