Ok so wtf have i actually just read! Possibly the weirdest most bizarre book i have read in a long time (and i read alot of them!) but i loved it! I'm still thinking about it days after so Williams has certainly got it right.

It's dark, funny, sad, and very surreal . What the point of it was or what was even going on is beyond me but what was the finger, the families game and Brian??!! I will leave you all wondering , just go read it!

Thank you netgalleyand vikingsbooks uk for my advanced copy , cannot wait to see what she writes next !

(i didnt give it 5 stars due to the fact i am still confused by it!)

What a weird book Odyssey was! I enjoyed Ingrid’s peculiarities and the setting of an enormous cruise ship run by the enigmatic captain Keith.

I can’t decide whether this book would be perfect to read on a cruise or whether it might make you worried mid-ocean and you’d need to get off at the next port!

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Adding to the canon of millennial ennui - with inevitable comparisons to Melissa Broder, Ottessa Moshfegh etc - Lara Williams' <i>The Odyssey</i> is a surreal nihilistic journey.

When cruise ship worker Ingrid is accepted into a revered employee training program, the manufactured reality of her life at sea begins to crack. As memories of her past begin to evade her time aboard, and the program asks for more than an understanding of wabi-sabi, Ingrid's world becomes to deteriote along with everything and everyone around her.

There's a hypnotic quality to Williams' latest work, drawing you in with a sense of intrigue and utter discomfort. I am yet to read Lara William's much-praised <i>Supper Club</i> but <i>The Odyssey</i> certainly has me wanting to explore more of her work.

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Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the ARC in return for an honest review.

I liked this strange novel about a woman working on a cruise ship. It is original, fresh, funny and pretty weird - although towards the end I thought it was perhaps not as weird as I was thinking; some of the stranger things actually starting making sense.

I think not too much of the plot should be revealed before reading, it is about a woman who has been working for 5 years on a cruise ship doing different jobs and about to embark on more managerial roles. We know she used to be married when she lived on land.

This book has been compared to Convenience Store Woman and I can see why. It makes you ask similar questions about work and life, and does so in a very original way.

3,5 rounded up and many thanks to Penguin for the ARC via Netgalley.

3,5* upped to 4
I supposed I'm too old or too cynical for another depressed millenial story.
I liked the style of writing and think that the author is talented storyteller.
Unfortunately I didn't care about the characters and the story fell flat.
Not my cup of tea
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

#netgalley #theodyssey publication date 21 April 2022
I was looking forward to this book but I feel disappointed,it was not what I was expecting. It feels unfinished and was bizarre but the kind of bizarre that leaves you wondering. 2/5 stars

“Everything is coming out of and going into nothingness.”

Ingrid left her life behind five years ago to work on a cruise liner. There, she takes on a number of different jobs and spends most of the rest of the time in her cabin. On her rare Land Days, she leaves the cruise liner behind to spend 24 hours getting drunk and not thinking about her old life. Then she’s chosen for the ship’s employee mentorship scheme - run by Keith, a fan of the Japanese aesthetic tradition of wabi sabi, which finds the beauty in imperfection - everything is coming out of and going into nothingness. But will the quest to find beauty in imperfection push Ingrid too far?

The Odyssey is Lara Williams’ most recent offering. It’s a perfect mix of completely mundane descriptions of Ingrid’s life on the ship (tidying displays, serving customers, and looking out to sea) and the utterly weird (pretty much everything else). I didn’t know what I was reading most of the time, and yet I found I just couldn’t put it down, and devoured this sub-200 page book in under 24 hours.

However, although I found it compelling, the storyline just didn’t pay off in the end. It’s possible I missed the point (at the end of reading it I turned to my wife and said “I don’t know what the hell I just read.”). According to the blurb, it was a “merciless takedown of consumer capitalism”, but it either failed to do this, or it was too bizarre for me to understand (and usually, I love the bizarre!).

Ultimately unsatisfying, yet completely compulsive, I think this is one I’ll be pondering for a while yet.

This novel will leave you a little bit like what did I just read but in the very best way. The protagonist Ingrid is pleasingly messy, working on a cruise ship under the tyrannous regimen of Keith, who has extreme weird hippy millionaire vibes, and finding herself promoted to his special management scheme. So much oddness happens, and you’ll be left wondering what Ingrid is running away from - what could possibly be worse than being on this boat? - and also what the hell is wabi sabi. I loved it.

The Odyssey by Lara Williams.

What a weird and compulsive little read. I enjoyed this one, I think. I found it hard to put down and read in a day.

Ingrid has worked on a cruise ship for five years avoiding life on land. She works in a variety of rotating roles and has occasional land days where she drinks and drinks before resuming life on board the ship.

It would be impossible to say much more without posting spoilers and this is one to pick up without knowing a lot about it. A short, deeply orignal , dark read that I think different readers will take different perspectives from.

It got under my skin, made me uncomfortable at times BUT the protagonist grew on me, despite her unlikeable traits and I very much enjoyed the conclusion.

Huge thank you to Penguin and Netgalley for the advance copy of this book for an honest review.

I've wanted to read Williams since the hype about Supper Club, and I'm so grateful to receive this ARC of The Odyssey. Any book in 2022 that titles itself the odyssey is a bold move, but was a good move from Williams. I loved the isolated setting of a cruise ship, and the completely unhinged antics in this book. Brb, reading everything Williams has ever written rn.

Lara Williams is one of my favourite authors out there and Supper Club is a criminally underrated wee book. I was delighted to get my hands on The Odyssey, a deeply weird little book.
The Odyssey is a novel about Ingrid, who is working on a cruise ship, avoiding real life. And then she joins a cult, which goes very differently to what you'd expect.
It's tricky to review because I don't want to give away too much, the less you know going in the better. Enigmatic is the word for this book. Less so for fans of Sally Rooney - I don't see it! - but definitely for fans of Melissa Broder. I will continue to bat for the cult of Lara Williams.

I was really excited about this book, feeling that it would be another installment in the fascinating trend of female protagonists with very questionable moral codes, it had everything to be a new favorite. However, I feel like it didn’t achieve what it set out to do. Maybe I completely missed the point, which is very possible since the book is very surreal and leaves enough room for different interpretations. Some ideas were started and I was very invested in their development, but then weren’t properly payed off or were dropped completely. I finished it feeling very unsatisfied, but not in a compelling or impactful way.

In The Odyssey we follow Ingrid who works on a cruise and enters a cultish program. This synopsis truly had me from the moment I read it and I had been anticipating this book for MONTHS. Maybe I hyped it up in my mind too much but it honestly fell a bit flat for me. As much as I loved the storyline and the strangeness of it, I did have a hard time getting into the book. Would still recommend it to people just to be able to experience the story (don’t know if I agree with the Moshfegh comparison though).

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin UK for sending me an advanced copy.

I enjoyed this even more than I enjoyed Williams' debut Supper Club, which is no mean feat. Hilarious and biting.

I read Supper Club and as soon as I saw this I knew I needed to read it and I'm so glad I did! What a lovely read and story, I definitely recommend this book

This is a strange book, and I like strange books. This is one of those books that keeps you wondering what you are really reading about, because it's quite obvious it's not only about Ingrid, her strange friends, her troubled relationships and her absurd work. There's much more to it, but what? I don't want to give away too much, because this is a compulsive, enignmatic read and it is better enjoyed the less you know in advance. Have an open mind and enjoy your own interpretation of it. I would definitely read other books by Lara Williams, I find her to be an extremely interesting and talented author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Advanced review copy provided by Netgalley for an independent, honest review

Summary: a millennial interpretation of the Homerian epic, surrounding a burnt out woman (Ingrid) escaping a domestic quarter-life crisis by working on a cruise ship. Things only get stranger when she is selected to be a part of the ship's managerial development programme, run by a mysterious and hard-to-read captain (Keith). Perhaps a bit style over substance.

This was a book that made me feel... whelmed. Not over, not under, but somewhere in the elusive middle. The writing was clever: dark and meandering as we follow Ingrid on her occasional land journeys into hedonistic stupor, but I'm not sure if I'd say it was funny. I felt so much pity for the main character as she yearned for meaning, or yearned to be put back together again in that wabi sabi way that has been prescribed to her by Keith.

The way The Odyssey is structured did feel poetic: I felt that it was a spiritual homage to the journey a hero might take towards actualisation. I'm just not sure if Ingrid got there in the end, or even, whether that was the point.

Review: The odyssey// Lara Williams

The latest novel from the author of The Supper Club, this time instead of a subversive eating group, we stumble upon what may only be described as a cult on a cruise ship.

At its centre is a trauma plot I suppose, but it’s speculative / absurdist elements prevent it from being saccharine or emotionally manipulative of the reader. We follow Ingrid who gives up on a marriage on land to join the staff of a luxury, new age cruise ship.

Quickly we see Ingrid’s past catch up to her as her alcohol dependency ramps up on 24 hour escapades in random port cities, then returning to the ship to manage the nail salon or lifeguard the pool. The cognitive dissonance continues to confuse the reader, unable to place the motivations of nearly everyone onboard. Why are you all still there?

Williams has a knack of incorporating a eclectic concoction of characters and themes, you will never be able to predict what the next chapter will entail, making it a compulsive reading experience.

Its nods to late capitalism workism culture were in tune, the cruise ship overlord is an overblown tech bro appropriating the Japanese practice of wabi sabi for his deluded idea of managerial self improvement. Adults regressing, playing dress up as oversized babies. Ladies of leisure dropping dead in the dressing room.

It edges towards horror in places. There are hints of ecological disaster but by the end of the novel, it felt lack lustre. Either the boundary of absurd should have gone further, perhaps full apocalyptic, or restrained to give reason to the characters choices. It felt in a lurch.

The Odyssey follows Ingrid who works on a ship as she gets embroiled in what can only be described as some sort of cult on board. I have no idea what was going on in this book at any point, but it was strangely captivating and I read it in one sitting.

The Odyssey by Lara Williams is a surreal and unsettling novella, set on a cruise ship where Ingrid embarks on a employee mentorship programme led by her manager Keith, which turns out to be something more akin to a cult. It is not a relaxing novel to read by any means, and I think some aspects were too chaotic and offbeat for my taste. Overall, I preferred Williams’ debut novel, Supper Club, but I would recommend The Odyssey to those who enjoy literary fiction featuring similar characters i.e. young women seeking escape from trauma.