Zachary Mason

Parts of The Odyssey are retold and repurposed, twisted to shed new lights. Threads of the myth are Trojan-Horsed right up the main streets of other, unrelated threads. This type of insular, reflective storytelling is usually not my thing (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/454.Travels_in_the_Scriptorium) but The Odyssey itself is totally, subtextually present in our present, already resonating. This isn't something from Mason's mind only, or Homer's. The Odyssey is THE archetype, THE hero show more myth. Its threads are still unraveling, framing our own ideas and attempts of, or to, heroism. This is a very lovely book. show less

Some of them are only a page or two long. Some go on a bit longer. Some tell a straight-forward, if new, story, and others only make sense when you get to the end. Zachary Mason's brilliant debut, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, present 44 alternate versions, 44 additional stories, 44 fictions or 44 truths, depending on how you look at it.

Mason wraps this collection up in a story that encompasses them all: he describes these tales as the transcribings of an ancient text, comprised of show more fragments and "outtakes" from the legend of Odysseus. The lost Gospels of the Bible, in a way -- the stories not included in the final version. Of course, no such ancient document exists. Surely there were, however, other stories of Odysseus once told, by Homer and by others, and while these cannot claim any kinship to those originals, they are unique enough, and true enough, in their own right.

Sometimes it is difficult to take personal preference out of the picture. I found this book enthralling, amazing, wonderful. As each story ended I was sad it was over, almost to the point of resenting the new tale that began on the following page... only to find myself drawn in all over again, just like before. But is it because I have always loved Greek mythology, the old sagas, both The Odyssey and The Iliad? Would a reader with less interest in Homer's classics find Mason's work just as compelling as I have? Well, perhaps not, but they would still have no choice but to recognize the clever writing, the elegant turn of phrase, and the sheer genius of the premise.

The Odyssey, after all, isn't just a story about monsters and Sirens and a long voyage home; it's the story of each person's journey through life, their choices and their mistakes. It's about gaining wisdom through adversity. And in Mason's book, poor Odysseus gets put through even more of the wringer than Homer already subjected him to. Different choices, different moments, different circumstances, and Odysseus is a failure, a success, a beggar; he forgets everything, he loses everything, he stops wanting what he has. They say that your life is made by the choices you make, every day, over and over again; Zachary Mason has given us here just a glimpse into the many ways the story of The Odyssey, and the Trojan War before it, could have been made. show less

Imagine Robert Graves' "Homer's Daughter" reduced to 5 pages. Now imagine 43 variants along the same lines with 20 of them written Calvino (including one on returning to Troy to discover it has been turned into a cheap tourist destination), 20 of them written by Borges (including several in which Odysseus is a character is his own or someone else's story), two by Vidal (one in which cyclops was basically decent and after he was tricked by Odysseus who then flees, the cyclops fantasizes show more stories of his wandering for the next decade, not wanting to kill him in his fantasies but to string out the revenge), and a final one by Lewis Carroll (in which the Iliad and the Odyssey are both manuals for strange forms of chess that have morphed and been corrupted over time).

If you cannot imagine all of those, then you should just read the book -- about 35 of the 44 inversions/reimaginations/retellings of aspects of the Odyssey are amazing, both in the way they are told and the new worlds they open up. And the effect of the book as a whole is powerful, reinforcing certain themes over and over again (like Odysseus basic character) while varying others (like the cause and resolution of the Trojan War). show less

I found this in the giveaway bin at work, and I count myself so lucky that it fell into my hands. Written by a working computer scientist in his spare time, these retellings of scenes, moods, and metaphors from the Odyssey are fascinating. Some of them feel a bit like Memento, they way they tell and re-tell the same moment again and again until Odysseus gets it right, or the Matrix, the way Odysseus sometimes exerts his will over his timespace. Others are tales of Odysseus' cunning that show more would completely fit alongside the originals, like apocrypha unearthed in an archaeological dig.

I do have to warn you: this book will make you want to read The Odyssey and the Illiad again. And while you're at it, pick up Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad and Jeanette Winterson's Weight. And then do what Zachary Mason did and retell your own myths to suit yourself. These stories weren't meant to lay undisturbed inside musty old books. show less