cover image Goddess at Home: Divine Interiors Inspired by Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Hera, Hestia, & Persephone

Goddess at Home: Divine Interiors Inspired by Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Hera, Hestia, & Persephone

A. Bronwyn Llewellyn. Rockport Publishers, $29.99 (144pp) ISBN 978-1-56496-920-0

If a man's home is his castle, a woman's home, insists Llewellyn, is her temple--and in it, she should feel like a goddess. Through interior design schemes inspired by a pantheon of Greek deities, women can create rooms that""nourish ambitions and fulfill dreams."" Going room by room and goddess by goddess, Llewellyn shows how the mythical qualities associated with the goddesses enrich a mortal's domestic sphere. Aphrodite can be evoked in the bathroom via sea-foam green, aquamarine and intimations of the ocean at sunrise. ""Paint the walls the colors of goldfish, sea grass, or coral,"" Llewellyn says.""Sew tiny seashells onto muslin as a curtain for window or shower"" to let the goddess""lead you back to your serene and sensual self.""""Adventurous, self-knowing"" Artemis is summoned into the den when""a mounted moose head has a place of honor on the wall."" With its blend of epicureanism and misty spirituality, quasi astrology and New Age color theory, the book propounds a style of interior design that in some hands could be called ""postmodern,"" a pastiche of historical references and intellectual sources; in this case, however, the tone is overwrought and slightly pretentious. Written in a voice of royal imperative (almost every sentence is a command), this volume provides plenty of directions but skips the authentic how-tos; its rich illustrations are designed to offer inspiration rather than instructions.