Kate Says: "Reading Is Fun!"

A wonderful, imaginative, and lyrically masterful, modern retelling of one of my favorite epic journeys of all times: The Odyssey.

My favorite character in this story was Penny. She was the most interesting and human character this book had to offer. She has flaws, she doesn't wait around forever for Payne to return, and she is most certainly her own person. She's a demanding female presence that I could really relate to. For this alone I would of given this book 3 stars.

However, it's the lyricism of the book that made me bump it up to 4 stars. Every word that's written on these pages are needed. It's as if Ben Ehrenreich went to his word tree and selected the ripest word and transformed it into an image that unraveled itself to be this book. For a first book, this was a very ambitious topic that was executed remarkably well.

The only downfall was that this book wasn't as good as some of his shorter pieces that I have read in other literary journals, specifically McSweeny’s, and for this reason alone was why I couldn’t of given it 5 stars. That and it’s not the kind of book one could read over and over again, well at least I couldn’t.