Here is an unexpectedly wonderful and poignant sci-fi retelling of parts of the Odyssey – 20 pages of beautiful writing. An ageless exile who lives alone on a prison planet. A survivor of a spaceship disaster who fell down from the sky. There is love; longing; sadness. They tell each other stories.

“A reprieve from solitude, at last. What are we to one another if we cannot be this?”

When you ask god-like beings for your heart’s desire, there is always a catch. Odysseus always leaves Calypso’s island.

If Andrew Sean Greer writes more retellings like this one, I’ll be happy to read them :)

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the free e-book! ( )

Rating: 3* of five

You saved him. Surely you should have been the one to send him {away}.

What is a person except this heap of loss? Otherwise—what wasted breath.

The Odyssey's Calypso passage, between two men and in outer space instead of among Greece's islands. Beware of asking the gods for favors because the answer might be yes. Few things in life hurt more than getting what you ask for because no thing, not a person a place a thought a feeling, no thing is fully knowable. And it's what you don't know about a thing that will stab you and leave you to bleed slowly, weaker with every loss, yet never granted the gift of oblivion.

Like everything of Author Greer's I've read, it does a fine job of filling time agreeably in terms of writing. The way it ends is in the myth it retells and is exactly what one would expect from a man of later middle years whose life is accelerating the process of takings-away that aging represents. If you already like his stuff, this will not disappoint. ( )