Few books are more deserving of a sequel than The Odyssey. In his new book, On Wine-Dark Seas: A Novel of Odysseus and His Fatherless Son Telemachus, Tad Crawford continues the story of The Odyssey from the point of view of Telemachus, Odysseus’s son. Telemachus tells his father’s story to the court bard, Phemios. The first chapters revisit the events of The Odyssey and show some of Telemachus’s twenty-year wait to meet his father, who departed for the Trojan War soon after his son was born. With chapter five, Crawford begins new aspects of Odysseus’s tale and shows father and son heading out to make offerings to the god Poseidon, looking for a people who don’t recognize a sail or an oar.

A few things I really like about this book:

  1. Crawford’s treatment of Odysseus. He is a man who flutters around the truth with stories that change from day to day, so that Telemachus is never quite sure which tale is true. Though Odysseus is not an unreliable narrator, his inconstancy makes for interesting reading.
  2. Long-suffering Penelope, who has waited twenty years for her husband to return, learns he has been unfaithful with women and goddesses alike while she has remained true to her marriage vows. Understandably, she is bitter, put-upon, yet ultimately loyal to her spouse. In the end, they reunite but squabble.
  3. The final third of the book is ultimately the most interesting. Crawford allows multiple characters to reweave their favorite stories from Homer, bringing new insights to the tales.
  4. The author’s notes at the end of the book itself were fascinating and detailed his many sources, revealing that On Wine-Dark Seas is a skillful blend of the Homeric stories and a goodly dose of inspiration. Maps and a glossary are included.

This book is brief, and I felt it could have used more words. The prose is quite nice, but, as with so many other recent retellings of the Greek myths, doesn’t rise to the level of musicality of Madeline Miller in The Song of Achilles and Circe.

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On Wine-Dark Seas: A Novel of Odysseus and His Fatherless Son Telemachus (Arcade, January 3, 2023) is available through:

Amazon    |    Barnes & Noble

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You can see my reviews of Circe here and The Song of Achilles here.

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