The Odyssey by Lora Williams

I really didn’t care for this book. Very weird actions and happenings. Not realistic.

Thanks to Net Galley for sending me an advanced reader’s copy for my review.

This novel centers on a woman, Ingrid, who has left behind her loving spouse to go live and work on a cruise ship. She rotates through duties and alcoholic off-shore excursions until she is selected to a cultish employee mentee program where she is pushed into different disturbing trials. I guess I was thinking this would be like Chris Bohjalian’s “The Flight Attendant,” set at sea. No, not at all. A little too out there for me.

The Odyssey, Lara Williams’ dystopian modern retelling of Homer’s epic poem, is a surreal trip through a troubled woman’s psyche that examines the profound alienation of the contemporary workplace.

Set on a cruise ship run by a mysterious captain and self-anointed lifestyle guru, Keith, the novel follows the monotonous life of gift shop worker Ingrid. Keith is a devoted (if misguided) follower of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi – which centres around finding beauty in every aspect of imperfection in nature. Ingrid finds a sense of purpose when Keith picks her to join an intense employee mentoring program which slowly descends into a cult.

I was intrigued by this book as it was pitched as similar to JG Ballard's High Rise, which it is in some respects, with the closed off cruise ship gradually decaying, but The Odyssey is much more focused on one person's mental state than the cruise ship itself. The blurb compares the book to Ottessa Moshfegh’s, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman and Sally Rooney’s novels and while it contains similar themes to all three – the dangers of capitalism, alienation and search for meaning and belonging and the descent into madness – I have never read anything like this. Reading this story is a disorienting experience, with the feel of a fever dream that becomes increasingly sobering as Ingrid nears closer and closer to her home: both on land, and within herself.

I'm a big fan of an unreliable narrator, and in Ingrid, this is exactly what we get. Williams was effective in creating a protagonist so erratic that I felt physically uncomfortable while reading, jarred not only by the story’s events but by the whiplash of rooting for – and sympathizing with – Ingrid one moment, and then being afraid of her the next.

It is a book that demands of the reader just as much as it rewards them with. All of the characters were so unique, interesting and flawed that I would have liked to have known a bit more about them. It felt like they floated in and out of the novel and could disappear at any time, perhaps onto land without a real explanation of why they were on the boat on the first place, why they left and where they went. And while Ingrid is British, she uses a lot of Americanisms (i.e., “apartment”, “garbage can”), which is confusing as the reader tries to piece together her character.

But Williams has managed to create a gripping takedown of modern workplace culture that explores the desire and struggle to forge human connection and the craving for some semblance of progress and order when one’s life has fallen apart.

Told from the point of view of a narrator that you can't really trust, this book definitely delves into the "messy woman" genre that I have grown to love. The description compared it to the likes of Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh, but I would say that I wouldn't necessarily agree with those comparisons, and there's nothing quite like this book out there (at least that I've read).
This book is bizarre and slightly confusing and dark at times, with a pretty unlikeable narrator and unlikeable characters, and I enjoyed reading it so much. I especially liked the way the narrator Ingrid would talk about her past while I as the reader had to kind of piece together what was missing, and I enjoyed how non-chalant the narrator was about some things that happened that she shouldn't have been non-chalant about.
The end of this book left a lot of questions still unanswered, which I would imagine some people would find frustrating, and while I did a little bit, it also felt fitting for the book; I didn't want to get too many answers because that's not what the rest of the book was like.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys unlikeable characters and unreliable narrators and sort of nontraditional plots and books.

This is such a weird book it’s hard to know where to start. Weird doesn’t mean bad though; discomfiting strikes me as a good description for Lara Williams latest book. Having read Supper Club, I knew to expect something in the “messy women” genre. But where Supper Club seemed to be about women taking back their power through food, The Odyssey seemed more about a woman giving up everything to the control of others. Maybe, in the end, to regain her own power though, I’ll admit, it was never entirely clear to me.

Ingrid is our narrator here. She works aboard the WA, a huge cruise ship that has been her whole world for several years now. She cycles through a rotation of jobs – gift shop employee, nail technician, lifeguard – and has only 2 friends, Mia and Ezra, with whom she plays disturbing and odd games. Her life and the novel itself is broken up by incidences of shore leave where she gets obliteratingly drunk and makes increasingly dangerous and unhinged decisions. On board the WA she has been chosen to be part of something referred to only as “The Program”. This is lead by an enigmatic man named Keith who encourages Ingrid to reveal the most intimate details of her past to him.

As someone who doesn’t generally find cruise ships appealing (and especially so in 2022), I thought the setting of the WA was quite brilliantly done. An entire, carnivalesque world unto itself where Ingrid has endless choices at her fingertips but is also trapped. The ship seems enormous but her own space is small and limited. As the novel progresses, the atmosphere of the WA becomes more dangerous, more hideous, and more satirical. The WA, it turns out, is something more like a cult than an ordinary workplace and the things it asks of its employees become more jarring and horrific. Williams does a good job of establishing Ingrid as the sort of character who will go along with these things. And while I actually really dislike reading books where characters make one bad decision after another, I also didn’t struggle to believe that the employees of the WA would do these things. It reminded me of the cults you read about, like NXIM or even some of the more intense MLMs, that demand utter devotion. Ingrid is a character looking to be utterly devoted to something.

As the story progressed, I could feel it ramping it up and I looked forward to the twist or the reveal or the vindication. So I was disappointed in the ending where all of that was only briefly hinted at. I wanted to see Ingrid’s transformation, even if it was into something even more hideous.

This was super strange and disturbing and oddly enough I didn't want to put it down. Reading through the perspective of a character like Ingrid felt very perverse, I felt like I was witnessing things that I shouldn't and I think that is why I enjoyed it so much. Lara Williams was unflinching and unapologetic, much like her main character, with her depiction of life and the human experience. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this!

Dark, intriguing, engaging, unputdownable; "The Odyssey" explores the theme of liminality, of the in-between positioning, both through the character and through the setting.

As per its synopsis, The Odyssey aligns itself with Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh, which is true formally and thematically, but the characters, environments, and events of this novel vibrate chaotically on another playing field, one where there is no end to the descent into nihilism and pain and conflict–there is only darkness, there is only the surreal.

Williams was successful in creating a POV so off-kilter that I felt physically uncomfortable while reading, jarred not only by the story’s events but by the whiplash of rooting for–and sympathizing with–Ingrid one moment, and then being afraid of her the next. While this was a fast-paced, thrilling read that led the reader down Ingrid’s spiral downward, it felt as though the story did not reach a breakthrough point, rather it became an affect and shock-inducing fever dream with no relief or reasoning that by the end left me wondering, “what just…happened to me?” But it kind of felt good??

Overall, this was an edgy and fun read, that pushed my comfort zone in quite exciting ways. My only formal critique is that while Ingrid is British, she uses a lot of Americanisms (ie. “apartment”, “garbage can”) that confused me at the start while I was initially trying to piece together her character.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for letting me read an e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book was eerie and uncomfortable and dream-like and I think I loved it. We follow the unreliable narration of Ingrid, who has been aboard the WA cruise ship for 5 years, through the mundanities and horrors of her life on board, and the impacts of the mysterious new program she undertakes led by the ship’s captain. I thought this was a great critique of modern capitalism and it left me feeling nihilistic but not necessarily in a bad way. A lot of the questions this book leaves you with remain unanswered at the end which I can definitely imagine some people would find frustrating, but personally I didn’t mind this as it seemed quite fitting for such a surreal story.

(Rating is 4.5 stars rounded up to 5)

I was intrigued by the life of a cruise ship crew member so I chose this book to download on NetGalley. The author, Lara Williams, concocted a peculiar story about consumerism, and people's strange way of pursuing faith in somebody. The story is about Ingrid and her life on the WA ship as a crew member and a mentee to the captain of the ship, Keith. Ingrid's idiosyncrasies, her routines at work, her friendship with other staff, her alcoholism, and her married life make her a unique character.

The Odyssey calls to mind comedies with peculiar characters such as Derek played by Ricky Gervais, and Mr. Bean by Rowan Atkinson. Each of them has unique characteristics and stories that defy common sense and create absurd humor. The characters in The Odyssey make the novel leaves an inerasable mark in my mind.

Thank you, NetGalley, Lara Williams, and Zando for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Oh, the possibilities. A high sea adventure, a cult…this book might have been excellent. Instead, in. decidedly less so fashion, it was hip. Think critical darling instead of something with a much easier (and more commercial) appeal. Mind you, normally I‘d appreciate that sort of thing – there’s plenty of sellouts peddling best-sellers out there, it’s nice to find something different – but, but this book was slightly too enamored with being different and it resulted in a dream-like dense nightmare-like spiral journey of a not especially compelling protagonist that even high seas and cults were unable to save.
Or, to go in more detail, this is a story of a woman of an uncertain age, an alcoholic who left her adoring spouse to go work on a luxury cruise ship. The ship is a grand and self-contained affair featuring every amenity, including your friendly neighborhood cult the woman ends up in. The cult follows a Japanese idea that all things come from and go into nothingness and, to this end, the woman has to submit to a variety of trials, from intense talk therapy to having her finger cut off. Yes, you read that right, her finger. And once she mastered herself, she can advance to becoming a master.
There are some onboard associations she has, friendships, jobs, and every so often she goes to the land and has drunken hazy adventures there, but that’s about it. The protagonist essentially spends her time not so much building a life but avoiding it and, specifically, avoiding going back to the life she had before, on land. There’s nothing quite like traditional three act structure and the untraditional appeal of this novel is somewhat tough to discern. The title presupposes a grand journey of self-discovery. In a way, I suppose, it is, for the character, it just isn’t especially interesting or engaging to read about. But, to its credit, it reads very quickly. Thanks Netgalley.

Perfect & creepy & day-glo colors & why you wear white dresses (to watch the day sprinkle it’s dirt on you.) I loved this book.

Thank you Netgalley and Author Lara Williams for this ARC.

Can we start with how amazing the cover is? Was definitely drawn to the book by it and then further intrigued by the blurb.

Story follows Ingrid and her life on a cruise where you get a sense that everyone who works there is escaping their reality. On Ingrid's journey, we meet a few more characters including Mia & Keith who bring out more of Ingrid's character.

At times unexpected, thought-provokative and very easy to engage with story which leaves a lot to reflect on.