Renaissance Moon
A Novel of Goddess Worship
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The strikingly glamorous Selene Catcher, an American scholar renowned for her books on Italian Renaissance art, is obsessed by a fierce devotion to the ancient Moon Goddess, Artemis. Selene's domineering father, who both worshiped and betrayed the Goddess, named his infant daughter for the Goddess's virgin form, setting the stage for the eventual disintegration of Selene's brilliant and tormented personality.
The story is told by her friend Giovanni Corio, an Italian priest, who watches in disbelieving horror as Selene sinks deeper and deeper into her pagan faith. Her bloody rituals begin to affect her writing as she passes inexorably through the mythic phases of the Goddess: from Selene, the cold intellectual...to Artemis, the chaste and vengeful Huntress...to Hecate, the Sorceress--creator of nightmares and spells.
But Selene's passion for the fascinating and mysterious Victor Bellacera threatens to overcome her devotion to Artemis. Fearing the Goddess's famous wrath, determined to appease Her by any means, Selene will stop at nothing to implore Her favor and forgiveness.
Sweeping from Renaissance Florence to the deep forests of America, Renaissance Moon is a chilling tour de force from the author of the acclaimed Commonwealth Avenue.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Father Giovanni, a Vatican priest, narrates a story of a bloody new cult of Artemis in Nevins's (Commonwealth Avenue) arty, horrific novel. When Giovanni first meets the glamorous American Selene Catcher in Florence, he is captivated by her beauty and her dazzling knowledge of Italian Renaissance art. Yet, he senses something dark beneath the surface. He learns that, although Selene's mother was a devout Catholic, her father was a Harvard professor whose research into the Eleusinian mysteries led him to worship Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon. Ultimately, the professor offers his infant daughter Selene to the chaste, bloodthirsty deity. As an art history student, Selene becomes perversely obsessed with images of the Annunciation and the Madonna, and equally repulsed by images of erotic fecundity she once adored. Finally, she encounters Titian's The Death of Actaeon. Transfixed by the image of Actaeon hunted down by the merciless goddess's hounds, Selene begins to transmogrify into a modern-day resurrection of Artemis, exhibiting a voracious need for sacrifice and appeasement that leads to heartbreak and horrifying gore. Overripe prose and myriad detailings about Renaissance art and ancient myths tend to muffle the horror here. What might have been a genuinely scary, if implausible, twist on our recent infatuation with goddesses is marred by a precious style and an academic touch that even the narrative's buckets of blood can't wash away.
