Ferdia Lennon

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)

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: An utterly original celebration of that which binds humanity across battle lines and history.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.

Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Graft Irish brogue onto ancient Syracusan and Athenian combatants, set the story in the aftermath of the Athenian defeat at Syracuse with its famously weird resolution to the problem the Syracusans had with what to do with the POWs, and make a buddy comedy out of it.

Of COURSE I asked for this book!

The titanic tragedies unfolding in today’s world are nothing new. The sheer number of us alive on Earth compared to three thousand...heck, three hundred...years ago means there are higher head counts in the disasters, but not greater or even equal proportions of the population. The scale of Athens’s humiliation, and her losses, in the failed imperial project that included her attempt at conquering Syracuse, rivals the British losses in World War I. An entire generation gone. The scale of democracy’s failings, and this imperial expansionist war was directly down to a democratic vote in Athens, has always been epic. After all, no government is one tiny bit better than its people force it to be.

So Gelon and Lampo get the historically accurate job of dealing with the horribly immiserated prisoners chucked down into the quarry to die. The solution has not changed. We get to see it all from the viewpoints of the two men who more or less came up with the solution, though. Gelon is sort of a sad soul, a man who is aware of and burdened by awareness of, the pointlessness of existence. Does any of this really matter, on can hear Gelon wondering inside himself. He finds no joy in the deaths the Athenians are doomed to, especially since it means he...and the world, of course...won’t get to hear the latest Euripides hit The Trojan Women. Because of course Gelon is all about the tragedian Euripides.

Lampo...get it?...finds light gleaming in all darknesses, Lampo thinks the Athenians must be good for something...and entertaining the Syracusans with the latest and greatest plays from cultural hub Athens is just the ticket. The men overhear the Athenians lightening ther last hours with dialogue from the current Athenian version of the West End/Broadway season, and hey presto a solution to the awful moral conundrum of just letting human beings die in misery comes. Lampo is the instigator of the full cast revival of the play, and convinces the angry Syracusans...even the guy with the club who’s taking revenge for his lost sons by killing every Athenian he possibly can...to set aside their hatred and listen to this brand-new play from the cultural capital of the world.

Setting aside the utter weirdness of this story’s factual reality...we know it really happened...this could have been a retelling of the events that went heavy on Message, bearing down hard on whichever piece caught Author Ferdia’s fancy. Instead he lets the reader select the message they want from the many on offer. Start with an Irish voice telling, in English, a tale of a violently failed colonial enterprise. I trust I do not need to go too far on that one to bring it into focus for you. Move to the unemployed potters, those craftworkers whose job it is to take dirt and turn it into useful and often beautiful things for people to benefit from, who see the utility and the necessity for using these aggressors for some kind of benefit to those they harmed. A tale, then, of restitution, never a bad thing to bring into the modern world. But then look again: the actors are there, able and ready to do their jobs, but unnoticed until summoned into being as actors by capitalist producers, who in case this parallel to the modern world slid past you, make no effort whatever to compensate the creator of the play they are producing. And the actors making the play are, it should not go unremarked on, living below the poverty level and thus are ready to do anything to stay alive.

And, should all that be more than you want to deal with in your present mood, this short novel can simply and pleasurably entertain you with its surreal blend of fact, fiction, and Aristophanes-level multilayered comedy.

Laugh along. Think deeply. Enjoy the music. You pick, you are the one who makes this read...all Author Ferdia did was find the story for you. I can’t recommend it highly enough.… (altro)

It's Syracuse in 412 BCE and the Athenian invasion force has been completely destroyed, with the survivors either having fled or been captured, and now dying a slow death in the limestone quarries outside the city. Gelon and Lampo, two unemployed potters, are regular visitors to the quarries, taking along food and drink for the prisoners in exchange for some verses by Euripides. One day Gelon proposes they put on Medea in one of the quarries, "Full production with chorus, masks and shit", with the two of them acting as directors. So those lucky few of the captives who make the cut are given extra rations at rehearsals, until Gelon feels that the Syracusans are ready for back-to-back performances of Euripides' best-known play and The Trojan Women, his latest.

I was immediately intrigued by the highly original premise as described in the synopsis when I came across this title in an email newsletter, and it did not disappoint. Through their shared love of poetry, Gelon and Lampo learn to see beyond the image of the enemy and recognise the human being in the other; their journey is deeply affecting, and life-changing for both sides.

This debut novel is remarkably assured, and I feel that the story and characters will stay with me for a long time. It will be interesting to see what subject Ferdia Lennon is going to tackle next.… (altro)