This engrossing, most imaginative novel was much more than a simple retelling of the Odyssey. The author used elements from that epic, but it was Odysseus's interior journey [which he doesn't realize until late in the novel] that was important. There were many psychological undertones with the main theme the attainment of wise love and various facets of love: constant, inconstant, lust as a counterfeit of love...
As Odysseus and other characters come to see the whole Trojan War shows the uselessness and futility of warfare.

The Trojan War has ended and Odysseus is struck with self-loathing, remorse and guilt for his part in conceiving the Wooden Horse and the conflagration, rampaging, and looting that follows. All through the story, we see him suffer painfully in his mind. Although he desires to return to his wife and son on Ithaca, he has to overcome obstacles: a monstrous sea-storm, shipwreck, overweening curiosity of his crew, detours he's forced to make. Then he does arrive home finally, disguised, and along with Telemachus, massacres Penelope's suitors.

There were gods and goddesses in the story, but the incidents although based on the Odyssey were all given very human explanations. I see where the stories of others such as Menelaus, Telemachus, Agamemnon, Orestes touched on Odysseus, but sometimes the extensiveness of these stories made the novel disjointed. Beginning with his time spent with Circe and his journey to the Underworld, we see his spiritual or psychological journey [maturation]. I felt the Underworld section owed a lot to Virgil's Aeneid. The metaphor of the oar into winnowing fan expresses this very well: "Penelope smiled. 'Haven't I said it [Odysseus's dream] formed the root of our life together? Where he had once used only the oar to steer his life, always questing outward, not searching for what lay hidden within, now he had begun the use of the winnowing fan. He sorted the wheat from the chaff in the granary of his heart; and then, as Hermes had bidden him he freely made an offering of the wild energy that had driven him for so long. In so doing he became a deep-rooted tree. After that, there was no more talk of roving.' " ( )

A recent re-read for a book group discussion after having first read it two or three years ago. Found it readable and possibly more enjoyable than first time round. But it's mightily flawed. I think his intended theme is to portray Odysseus as undergoing a transformation and there's some stuff in the last couple of pages about love etc . that appears to be what he's trying to achieve here, but it's all rushed and skirted over. The crucial six years of his time of Calypso is skipped over and then told, extremely briefly, in flashback. The mythology is largely taken out or explained away, so what are we left with? Still, it's readable and some elements of the story, especially Agamemnon/Cassandra/Clytemnestra/Aegisthus/Orestes etc. come alive. ( )

A first class read and an interesting view of the fate of the partisipants after the razing of Troy combined with the gradual movement of the Dorian invasion of Mycenaean Greece. This ties in nicely with Valerio Massimo Manfredi's story of the travels of Diomedes after Troy - 'The Talisman of Troy'. ( )