You start with feeding Athenians, and next thing you know, you're directing Euripides
Glorious Exploits | By Ferdia Lennon
This review is 345 words. Alas, I had a lot to say.
I was eight or nine when my friend Julia convinced me that a plant called pickleweed grew in her yard. She had tasted it. It tasted “just like pickles.” So we set out, sampling everything from skunk cabbage to Kentucky bluegrass to find the elusive pickle-flavored plant. We never did. But don’t you miss those days? When you could easily spend an afternoon chasing something wild and creative just because it feels necessary?
Ferdia Lennon’s novel Glorious Exploits captures that same spirit of, “I need to feel something that’s missing, let’s create it.”
The plot sounds like a rainy-day make-believe game cooked up by a kid: two Syracusian potters, Gelon and Lampo, in 412 BC, decide to put on two plays by Euripides in the quarry where the city is keeping Athenian prisoners, starring the very same Athenian prisoners. It’s original and uninhibited in its creativity.
I loved every word.
It’s easy to love every word because the novel is narrated, until the final few pages, by Lampo, who sounds a lot like everyone's drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. Opinionated. Bit buffoonish. Every sentence he utters drips with unearned confidence. But when it’s not your uncle, the stories are a laugh.
In Lampo’s world, the Peloponnesian War has just left its mark in Sicily. Anti-Athenian sentiment still dominates in the city of Syracuse. It is a war-novel, of sorts. I can already hear my mom saying, “I don’t like violence.” (I ask, who among us does?) So, a note for you, Mom: There’s some bashing of skulls. A bit of swearing. And the poor “Athenian pricks” are being starved to death in a limestone pit. If you pick this up, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
In a final twist, the novel becomes a poignant love letter to storytelling. That might sound like saccharine book-lover speak, but it’s a novel about ancient theater, so let me have it. What saves it from being too sweet is its honesty about the limits of art. Stories can’t fix everything, and certainly don’t move us all in the same way.
Final Thoughts: Best quest novel I’ve read in years. Audacious. Ferdia Lennon, please write more books!
Who should read Glorious Exploits? “Modern ancient people” readers. (Think Circe or Song of Achilles). Hellenic studies folks. Myths & legends lovers. Dads and brothers who claim to “hate fiction”. Those not afraid to laugh at a prisoner of war joke. And probably your drunk uncle.
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