Carol S. Pearson

This book was recommended to me by an unemployment counselor in the 90s. What I remember 20 years later is that the archetypes can be seen as stages that you go through and that there is hope that you will go from the negative powerless one to the positive powerful one.

Well worth reading, the only thing I didn’t like was tripping over too many references to mid-20th-century popular novels that I probably won’t ever read. However, the authors also analyze many of the nineteenth-century novels that interest me.

The theory of the myth and hero archetypes are rather dated as well. But the authors provide many interesting insights into the novels they touch on, and the general premise of the book is very well supported by their analyses.

The tagline for this book: Using the power of story to transform your life" sounded promising, but the book itself is overlong and reads more like a textbook than a self-help guide. Built around the Greek myth of Demeter, Zeus, Persephone and Dionysus, the book is divided into sections for each of those characters. There is a long introduction that includes the myth and then sets up the premise of the book and how it will help the reader use that myth to transform their life. Jam-packed with show more many, many examples, the book includes a lot of material for many sources. Unfortunately, by the time I waded through all of that, I had little interest in the actual exercises, most of which felt more like homework than self-help. The author does write well, and clearly puts a great deal of work into her writing, but some of this material would have been better used in a history book. As a self-help book it would be better if it were shorter, used a more conversational tone, and put the exercises, or at least a summary line at the beginning of each chapter.

Note: this review is based on an ARC from the publisher show less

(Per ARC received)

In one sentence, I'm going to explain this book:

"Persephone Rising was is a pretentious, loquacious instructional book that vilified any form of previous faith by taking a precarious situation and masking it as a meliebrous, heroic accomplishment!"

See what I did there?

I love Greek Mythology; it's amazing and the basis for many tales we've enjoyed for years. But the story of Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus and Zeus is in no way, according to me and my upbringing, a schooling show more for womanly heroism! It's about a girl being sent away, intended to Hades; a mother who was lost, angry and threw a tantrum because her husband- a God with the propensity for provocation, again acted in character.

Pearson gave the original story, and I was enthralled. Did I mention, I love mythology? But afterwards, she divided the book into Parts, expounding on the character's roles and how they can Awaken the Heroine within.

I read up on Pearson, PH.D and... Read the rest of my review at: http://tinyurl.com/pkmt7nj show less