FABULOUS

It's in the nature of myth to be infinitely adaptable. These witty fables, elegantly written by the historian and full of sharp-eyed observation of modern life, are also visionary explorations of potent mysteries and strange passions, charged with the hallucinatory beauty and horror of their originals. An elderly counter-tenor tries to sing his wife back to life in the modern underworld of a hospital ward, and is doubly befuddled by dementia and the death of his wife. Acton, a cocksure estate agent, trespasses on his boss, a powerful woman's privacy, and is hunted down for it by his own pack. Minos, people-trafficker and drug-lord, rules a seedy south-east town from his labyrinthine underground hideaway. There we get to understand the gang-master and a prostitute. We meet a pest-controller suspected of paedophilia and a librarian so well-behaved that her parents wonder anxiously whether she'll ever find love. We are pulled into the pitfalls of the dating age in the #metoo era and all of these stories are inspired by ones drawn from Greco-Roman myth, from the Bible or from folklore. 'A wonderful book. It moved me to tears.' - John Burnside. With useful explanations of the fables at the end. 205pp, paperback.