Psyche and Eros

McNamara’s attractively told debut reimagines the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche as a romance between two unpleasant people. Difficult bits of Apuleius’s original telling in The Golden Ass have been smoothed to a simpler reflection of modern mores. Psyche is not a younger sister but an only child, raised like a boy to be a hero. Stripped of sibling rivalries, feminine constraints, and a belief in her powerlessness before the gods, this Psyche, though not without her charm, is unimaginative, single-minded, domineering, and arrogantly youthful. She doesn’t need to learn about agency and capability—she needs to get past self-absorption. Meanwhile, immortal Eros is bored and yearns for impossible death. He’s explicit that his arrows of desire only work “if I infused them with my will,” yet an accidental scratch is enough to infect him with cursed lovesickness for Psyche. It also turns him into one of the tropiest romantic types: the guy who’s too afraid to communicate. This pairing results in an eminently readable love story that fails to be memorable because it refuses to engage with the tough stuff. Agents: Maria Whelan and Catherine Drayton, InkWell Management. (May)