THE GREAT GOD PAN

When readers first meet Pan, the nature god, he is perfectly happy with his half-god, half-goat nature, enjoying bodily pleasures but unhampered by the complications of love. This changes when he meets Iphigenia, bastard daughter of Helen of Troy. Thus does Napoli splice together two strands of Greek myth to craft a lovely musing on the nature of love. Iphigenia responds to Pan with a respect that causes him to question love, truth, family, fate, and ultimately godhood. As Pan quests through Greece after his own version of truth, the narrative effortlessly braids in other stories from myth to comment on his inner transformation. Pan tells his own story in the present tense, using heightened language that places readers in the otherworld of myth, the lush and varying landscapes embodying Pan’s own inner state and frequently pulsing with erotic tension. As the tale moves on to Iphigenia’s sacrifice at Aulis, the tension ratchets up almost unbearably, and Pan’s newly gained understanding provides an elegant and tragic solution. (Fiction. YA)