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Review: Odysseus

Odysseus Odysseus by Geraldine McCaughrean
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a really nice audiobook, and it’s probably the most enjoyable way of experiencing the tale of The Odyssey without having to trudge through 24 books of ancient greek poetry. It’s only four hours long, so right away I knew that this was going to be a super abridged version, but for the sake of my test for Greek and Roman Studies I was hoping it would keep all the important bits and I would be good to go. That was mostly true. It starts and ends different than the actual poem, which is bad since those are things that I would most likely be tested on. And I was. My test asked me about who saved Odysseus from the angry village people at the end and I was just like:
Confused gif
But then again, I’m not going to lie; I listened to the grand majority of this audiobook while I was creating my final project for 2D Design Studies so I was not really paying attention to most of it.

Other than that, this book very predominantly focuses on books 9-12 where Odysseus recounts his travels. All twenty other books are considerably shortened down, with the first eight being covered by a short conversation between Penelope and her young son Telemachus about him missing his dad (who he’s never met) and her telling him about him. Something I didn’t like was how after that they go straight to the perspective of past Odysseus. They start the book when Telemachus is 10 years old: Aka right after the end of the Trojan war since Odysseus left when Telemachus was a baby. So this version never shows Odysseus escaping from the island and then getting to another island and then books 9-12 being him telling the people there his story. I don’t even know this part very well because I only know what my professor summarized and I was hoping this book would fill in the blanks. It filled in the blanks pretty well from books 9-12, but books 1-8 were nigh unaccounted for. The fact that this retelling doesn’t just remove parts but also goes about the events of the story in a different way and order makes it an unideal study tool. I wish this audiobook was based on a longer retelling, because with only 128 pages of written material there was definitely room to fit some more things in.

If you’re not being tested on this story and you just want to become cultured and know the story of The Odyssey (while putting as little effort into it as possible) this is an okay way to go. I think you’ll still not be getting the complete picture and you’ll still be missing some important elements, but you’ll at least get a good understanding of the most popular section of the story (books 9-12). Plus, with a full-cast audiobook it feels like you’re listening to a movie, so that’s always fun.

About the story itself, it’s actually not bad at all. The fact that this was a retelling and that I didn’t have to trudge through ancient greek mumbo jumbo language definitely helped a lot. (view spoiler) I would for sure recommend getting to know the story and reading/listening to it in some way or another that’s not just a summary.

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