Brilliant Fun

Rarely have I been as amused by a book as much as I am with Zachary Mason's novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey. It is brilliant fun. And the brilliance is in the substitute illusions Mason creates. Mason takes the alternate ending to a depth rarely seen.

My all-time favorite books are authored by men with only one name: Homer and Virgil. I know and love those time-worn epic tales of the lives of ancient Greeks and Trojans and the early Romans. I'm fluent with the poems and their characters, twists, and turns. I'm also very familiar with the various translations of each, with most of the explanations by classical experts as to this twist, that character, and even the philosophical and psychological examinations of the texts.

Mason's novel just makes those ancient tales all the more pleasurable. I think you'd enjoy it. The one drawback is that too many have not read even one translation of the original from front to back and would not recognize the unusual treatment Mason gives to many of the story elements. Too many get their Illiad from the movie Troy and their Odyssey not at all.

So if you haven't read Homer's original in any translation, start there first. And then pick up a copy of Zachary Mason's book. The short chapters stand on their own and will have you musing whimsically before you drop off to sleep. And maybe the grin will carry you through until the alarm clock savagely wakes you in the morning.