Ferdia Lennon

Unusual book set in B.C Sicily during the Peloponnesian War. In the City of Syracuse a deep pit hold Athenian prisoners captured after the Greeks invaded and were defeated. Two men, Lampo and his friend Gelon, two unemployed potters regularly go to the pit out of boredom occasionally feeding the men.

One of the prisoners cites a love of Euripedes, who Gelon is a huge fan. One thing leads to another and because so much of the play Medea has been memorized, they decide to put on a play in the pit. The cast of characters are starving, maimed, and without hope but the idea of a play revives interest in life itself. Along with a group of rag tag children and other supporters in Syracuse, the play eventually takes place with people attending.
However, the play is interrupted by guards and many are beaten and killed. The rest of the story tells of Lampo's scheme of saving those that took part in the play.

The story is funny in part, brutal in parts, but it held my interest.… (altro)

I took a Classics course in college and never really could get into it. Too dry and all those places, people and events just seemed hard to relate to. So, Lennon’s novel was not on my to do list until I read some interesting reviews especially about voice. His quirky use of contemporary Irish vernacular gives a modern feel to his story. Reading Lampo was a little like listening to some guy in a pub with lots of interesting things to tell you if you keep buying his drinks. Lennon is a writer who appreciates classical history but also understands that it can be a little dry for many of us. He uses an obscure reference in Plutarch suggesting that Syracusans paid Athenian POW’s with food and freedom for verses from their beloved Euripides. “I believe any city that gave us those plays has something worth saving.” With this in mind, he imagines a story filled with humor, brotherhood, community, and humanity. Art will always be important even in the midst of war and violence because earth is “a wounded thing that can only be healed by story.”… (altro)

Reading this excellent novel I found myself nearly constantly bracing for impact. It's a fast moving, highly readable, beautifully written story that it took me ages to finish, because I couldn't handle the suspense at all. Glorious Exploits is an all-too successful combination of two world-class tragic genres (Greek tragedy and Irish comitragedy), and I was so stressed out waiting for each additional sandal to drop. I stopped several times in the middle of extremely suspenseful, climactic, and beautiful passages to like, put this book down and distract myself with other books. One time I put this down and read a different book that was like a thousand pages long. But nothing I did could reduce its power! It's so frightfully effective! Every time I picked it up I was right back in it, laughing and wondering and feeling a horribly renewed dread. I was impressed with how often I had been bracing myself for entirely the wrong thing—you might think anything that could go wrong would, but no! Some things go all too right! You might think the worst possible thing that could happen, definitely would, in every case, but in fact there is no way to know which level of awful, or in fact sublime, anything is going to be! Unpredictable, beautiful. One of the best books of the year.… (altro)

Set in 412 BC, in Syracuse, Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon follows the exploits of two unemployed potters Lampo and Gelon in the aftermath of the Athenian invasion of Syracuse. As the vanquished Athenians lay imprisoned in one of the old quarries in the city, starved and kept in horrific living conditions and easy targets for those seeking revenge against the invaders, Gelon and Lampo devise a plan to direct a production of Euripides’s Medea with those captives who remember the lines from the plays. Gelon is motivated by his love for Greek plays and his fear that the defeat of the Athenians would ultimately result in their famous literary works being lost to time. Lampo, the loyal friend that he is, goes along with his friend’s plans, though he does not share his friend’s fascination for Greek tragedies. The Athenians who know the lines of the play are offered extra rations as an incentive to participate. The narrative follows the friends as try to organize the resources (casting, funding, venue, costumes and of course, an audience who would need to be convinced to attend a play featuring the Athenians who the Sicilians hate with a vengeance) they would require for staging Medea and Euripides’ new play The Trojan Women which Gelon only recently heard about and the events that follow.

I was intrigued by the unique and original premise of this novel and was not disappointed. The narrative is presented from the perspective of Lampo in the first person. While Gelon is brooding and intense with a literary bent of mind, and having experienced much personal loss in his lifetime, in contrast, Lampo is more easygoing, impulsive, compassionate and loyal to a fault as is evidenced through his friendship with Gelon, his interactions with the captives in the quarry and his feelings for Lyra. There are quite a few sub-plots woven into the primary narrative that flow well, without ever becoming overwhelming despite the large cast of supporting characters and the multiple threads of the story. The supporting characters are equally well thought out and each has a distinct role to play in the story. The writing is elegant with contemporary dialect interspersed throughout the narrative, which works surprisingly well. The author strikes a perfect balance between the dry humor and light-hearted humorous elements in the first half of the story and the heartbreaking shocking events later in the narrative that alter the direction of the story altogether culminating in an emotionally satisfying yet bittersweet ending. The story touches upon themes of friendship, loyalty, the horrors of war, love and loss, grief and how an appreciation of art and literature can be a unifying force for people all across the world, despite their differences otherwise. Well-written, with a vividly described setting and well-thought-out characters, this novel is an engaging, entertaining read.

Many thanks to Henry Holt and Co. for the gifted ARC. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.… (altro)