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In Ovid's Metamorphoses Cupid punishes Apollo by making him fall in love with the nymph Daphne, who has sworn herself to lifelong virginity. Being chased by Apollo, Daphne cries out to her father for help and is turned on the spot into a laurel tree. The eponymous protagonist of Will Boast's debut novel, Daphne, echoing her mythical counterpart, suffers paralysis when she experiences intense emotion. A romance, a comedy, a wide-ranging exploration of contrary impulses – the need to feel, and the fear of feeling – Boast's novel is wry and witty, tender and weird. Although its San Francisco coolness can feel staged or overdone, this book probes our responsibility to each other and to ourselves, expanding beyond easy romance into a political exploration of the necessity of empathy, and the toll that empathy can take on us. Tracing the frail intimacy of her relationship with a new man, Ollie, Daphne is at once a fable and a beautifully engaged reflection on love. It is strange and heart-warming in equal measure.
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