I seem to have a minority opinion on this one--a lot of people say that they love the opening chapters, which are 'lyrical' and 'searing' and 'poetic,' but dislike the middle chapters which are 'gimmicky' and, for want of a better word, soulless. And then the last chapters pick up again.

I had exactly the opposite experience. The opening chapters read like the cheesiest possible American Literary Novel, in which two lower-class people fall in love for no very obvious reason, except that they both have genitals. Drug use! Sex! Suddenly we're in Love. I'm willing to give Ehrenreich the benefit of the doubt here: I think he's being facetious. The narrator's repeated claims that this is not a love story are in fact true. This is not a love story. It is a mockery of a love story, which points to the more important allegory and comedy of colonialism, war and hatred that fills the middle three quarters of the book, and does so with great panache and many giggles.

Once Payne and Penny have fallen in Lurv, they ride off into the sunset. Payne proceeds to force the 'native' population (here, modernized lotus-eaters) into servitude. They build the city state that Payne rules; he retains their loyalty because he's stronger than them, gives them drugs, and lets them ogle/fall in lurv with his hot wife. If that doesn't sound familiar, think about it a bit more the next time you sit down with a bottle of wine to watch a Scarlett Johansson movie.

Then Payne heads off to war, Penny and her insufferable child (who gets a very funny, five page Telemachiad towards the end) pine for him, the 'suitors' live in decadence and the hope that Penny will one day come to visit them... and, if you've read the wikipedia entry on the Odyssey, you'll know how this ends.

There is a love story here, between the mysterious visitor, Miss, and Penny. But it's boring and doesn't add all that much to the book, except to stretch it out a bit (note that Miss might just be an allegorical stand in for Penny's longing for Payne, and/or her hatred of him).

It's all very well written. The middle bits are what I imagine a George Saunders novel would look like, and are thus fabulous: they touch the real world. The early and late chapters are like the sort of thing written by rich, hormonal teenagers under the impression that impoverished people are more interesting/intelligent/virtuous than the rich, and that writing about them and their fuckings is somehow character building. They primarily touch themselves. ( )

First, I'll add my voice to the chorus: Goodreads should include half-star ratings.

'Cause this is a 3.5-star book, a melancholy but zippy stab at the Odyssey. The prose and some of the vignettes remind me of Donald Barthelme and Donald Antrim (particularly The Hundred Brothers), and I like Ehrenreich's style/sensibility. ( )

This book was wild. It usually made my head spin. ( )

A modern-day re-telling of The Odyssey.

At first, it seemed this was a cross between Francesca Lia Block and Tom Robbins, which theoretically could be very fun. But there was something very dark and oppressive about this, clever but unfeeling. I didn’t connect with the characters and the story seemed to be trying too hard to be non-linear at times. I can see how some people would really get into it, but I really didn’t. ( )