This was a compulsively uncomfortable read for me. I was entirely unprepared having not read read author's debut- for the cynical and dystopian turn it would take. I certainly didn't find any of the wicked humour promised by the blub. However, it was beautifully written and carefully plotted. The narrative was fluid and subtle and the end felt wrenching. I'm not sure I enjoyed it exactly, but I would recommend it.

Thank you for the opportunity to read.
This was pretty different to anything I've read before, I hadn't read Supper Club which is probably why I found this a bit difficult to follow at first but I perservered with my own misgivings and glad I did as I eventually understood the flow and writing and really liked the subtlety of it all. Would definitely read more from this Author.

The Odyssey by Lara Williams is highly original and unusual and yet weirdly relatable. The strong narrative voice carries you along. I look forward to reading more from this author.

I loved Lara Williams' ridiculously visceral Supper Club, so I was pretty excited to see receive The Odyssey - it's a contemporary about a woman who works in a luxury cruise and when she gets accepted into a mentorship program, she has to confront the reasons why she joined the cruise in the first place, which is in fact a pretty intense cult. I can't describe this book appropriately, it's just... bonkers, completely bonkers. Watching Ingrid as she reacts to the world, with absolutely no emotional balance or making any sort of good choice throughout the entire book, plus having very little empathy and serious mommy issues, I could not look away from the train wreck that is this book. If you love books about people in serious need of therapy and enjoy reading for the ~vibes more than an actual sensible story, I can highly recommend this!

The narration holds an intoxicating level of very altered self-awareness.
The reading experience is paralleled by a strange curiosity. A need to understand what is happening, why the characters act in the way they do, and what Ingrid is experiencing.
The writing makes me feel voyeuristic as the reader. Williams has a way of creating intentionally uncomfortable situations and allowing the characters sit in them.

I love novels that explore the human condition in such a dry way. Without being blurred by niceties and social norms. And I enjoy this even more from a female narrator.
Similar to Ottessa Moshfegh’s style, Williams uses Ingrid as an existentialist and capitalist study.

Given the title, book cover and blurb I think a lot of people will buy this on the mistaken belief they are buying a straight forward middle of the road novel. Well, they are going to be surprised by this.

It's an interesting question as to what is an authors head when they sit down to write a book. Do they have a political, sexual, religious, feminist or financial agenda or are they looking to delight, entertain, or extend their reader's thinking and reading experiences?

The Odyssey certainly comes in at the extending and thinking end of a readers experience.

On the blurb it is described as wickedly funny. I fundamentally disagree with that. It's a transgressive dystopian horror story. Is it a merciless takedown of 'capitalism and our attempts to find something to believe in'? No.

Our lead character is Ingrid, She behaves with little thought or sympathy to anyone around her or herself. She is spectacularly selfish, how any of us might behave on our worst days. Actually she behaves as badly as Odysseus did on so many occasions

The quality of the writing is spectacular, particularly the multi layered way she will go back and explore an incident on several levels. Lara Williams has an incredible way of putting together a sentence which can be read in more than one way.

Trying to make sense of what is going on is complicated by the lack of direction from the author. She leaves it up to the reader to establish a gestalt that works for them,

On one level the novel is taking place on a cruise liner. But, it could be taking place in a mental asylum and Ingrid's experiences could be rationalised that way. Then there is a strong Japanese element with 'wabi-sabi' Keith, the rising through a gangs rank, the cutting off of part of a finger tip. But, maybe it is really about what happens inside a cult set within a closed world. Or, it is about a voyage of self discovery? A descent into madness? I got to the end and I still don't know.

The most touching parts of the novel are the self nurturing play times Ingrid gets up to with her two friends. Mind you they are pretty strange, both the friends and the playtime. You feel very uncomfortable but they are one of the few times you actually like Ingrid.

I didn't enjoy this - rather I was intrigued with it, admired the writing and trying to make sense of what was going on. The writing and pacing is excellent.

I applaud the way the author lulls you along and then gives you an electric shock with some detail or act of shocking stupidity/depravity. Very Ballard. I'm more of a Scarlett Thomas fan when it comes to emotion, dark humour and dysfunction.

I wanted to understand what was happening and why it was happening .but never did.. Does that matter? No.

My thanks to NetGalley, Penguin UK and Lara Williams for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ingrid works on a cruise liner and has done for several years. Her work provides her with an identity and structure. When not working on the cruise ship she gets paralytic on whatever the local alcohol is. Suddenly she is scouted by the ship’s captain, an enigmatic and guru-like figure, to take part in a mentorship scheme, and the scheme pushes her to her mental limit.

The Odyssey makes for a very intruding read, and any fans of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman and Ottessa Moshfegh’s self destructive and unlikeable main characters should be very much sated.

Williams’ prose is very well crafted and extremely readable, which is a great testament to her as a writer because Ingrid as a character is unlikeable if not completely unsympathetic. Her life before working on the ship is mentioned sporadically and one gets the sense she is trying to forget it or run away from it. Much like the narrator in Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, Ingrid’s life is very much informed and given purpose by her job. She owns none of her own clothes, choosing to dress in the company uniform she’s issued and has no hobbies or interests outside of her current rotation. Allusions to a husband are made, and it is never mentioned what happened to him or where he is, and one feels that Ingrid’s life on shore was not a happy one and she is very much running away from it. When she is given land leave she seems without purpose, wandering wherever the ship is docked, getting black out drunk and getting into serious bodily harm. It seemed that without the distraction of her job Ingrid seemed to go mad, and her selection into the ship’s mentorship scheme furthered this.

The ship’s guru/captain was a very interesting character. His idiosyncratic tendencies were on of the most compelling parts of the book, and it was sometimes difficult to tell of her was helping Ingrid in any way or aiding to her steady descent into madness. I would have enjoyed to see more of him but also understand that the brevity of his character makes him more mysterious. The scheme she is enrolled in is also very strange, and we get no real sense of how it works or what Ingrid is actually working towards. The trials that she are submitted to vary from the mental to the physical, and they reminded me very much of Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure and the father’s sadistic ‘cures’, and how you got the sense that they were designed less to help the participants but harm them or keep them in line.

The setting I also found intriguing as I hadn’t seen a cruise ship as the setting of a literary fiction novel before. I think it added to Ingrid’s instability and gave her this sense that she was never settled, always shifting.

The title ‘The Odyssey’ seems to allude to some great adventure or journey, and the odyssey Ingrid experiences is a journey, but it is very much a mental one. It is a slow unravelling of her mind as it becomes clear she cannot run from the life she had on land anymore. The Odyssey is a good read that could have benefited from maybe being less mysterious and providing more answers, but I also acknowledge that the mysteries weren’t the point of Ingrid’s journey.

I read and thoroughly enjoyed Supper Club and have hand sold numerous copies to customers over the past few years. The Odyssey was my most anticipated book of the year and it didn’t disappoint.
Like Supper Club, The Odyssey is subtle and unassuming; it gradually progressed from feeling quiet and calm, following an ordinary woman who works on a cruise ship, to a tense, confusing, and at times, disturbing portrayal of someone who does not have a grip on herself or reality. Williams is brilliant at building a narrative that is intriguing without being heavy handed with the plot or characterisation and, in Ingrid, has created a character that, while dysfunctional and erratic, is endearing and likeable.
I can’t wait to see what Lara Williams does next.

What a stunning book! I loved the writing and there were so many moments where it broke my heart. I can't wait to read more by this author.

It's difficult to say much about this book without veering into interpretation that gives away more than I'd have wanted to know before reading this, and I'm actually still unsure about how secure my reading of the book is. So I'll just say that this is weirdly compulsive and enigmatic and yet a bit ploddy at the same time.

The whole dysfunctional-and-alienated-young-female-narrator thing feels like a sub-genre of its own, though Williams pushes it a bit further into slightly edgier territory here. All the same, it's disappointing to uncover the intimated root cause of Ingrid's troubles, and I wanted a few more decisive pointers to what is happening at the elusive ending: a deeper retreat into psychic safety or a coming to terms with self-responsibility?

I didn't see any of the advertised 'wickedly funny' or 'mischievous' quality noted in the blurb - to me this was increasingly dark though with a cutting satirical edge. Rather oddly, I liked the material and approach more than I actually enjoyed reading this book which felt like a novella stretched unnecessarily - but interesting, a little puzzling and increasingly hallucinogenic. Be prepared to read between the lines for this one.

Awesome read for a long holiday.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Wow! Such a weird but hypnotising book. I knew that what I was getting myself into was going to be a ride having read Williams' debut Supper Club, but this was another level. Awkward, rough but hilarious at the same time. Not for the faint hearts.

Thank you to NetGalley, Lara Williams and Penguin for the chance to read and review this advance copy. This book follows Ingrid, a woman who has been working on a luxury liner for five years straight after impulsive leaving behind her old life and failing marriage. It portrays her desperate search to find meaning, salvation, control and escape.

This book is beautifully written. It's incredibly readable and the turns of phrase are original and in some places, magnificent. The direct honesty in her narration is refreshing and shows us her descent into her own particular brand of madness rather than telling us, leaving the reader to work plenty out for ourselves instead of being spoon-fed. I'm a big fan of an unreliable narrator, and in Ingrid this is exactly what we get.

Sadly, the aspects that I personally didn't enjoy marginally outweighed this. I found the ending to be rushed and unformed, not in-keeping with the beautiful arc that had been slowly developing over the course of the novel. The game 'Families' made me feel so deeply uncomfortable that despite the fact that I fully understood the metaphorical significance of it, it seriously put me off (and I have read many a disturbing novel). However, this is in no way a reflection on the writing itself, and causing discomfort was undoubtedly the point.

All in all, in my personal opinion it's the ending that caused 'The Odyssey' to drop from a four star to a three. Regardless, it's wonderfully written and for the most part, an extremely enjoyable read!

It’s been five years now that Ingrid has left her husband and former life to work on board the luxury cruise liner WA. She regularly has to rotate between the different departments and thus has become an expert of the ship and knows every corner. With Mia and her brother Ezra, she has befriended two colleagues with whom she passes her limited free time. When she is selected for a mentorship programme and promoted to manager, things become more complicated between them, Mia is obviously envious of her friend’s new position. Yet, Ingrid is not sure if she can fulfil the high expectations of Keith, captain and guru of the team. But she is willing to give all – and that is more than you could ever imagine.

After having finished reading “The Odyssey”, I was left wondering and confused. Lara Williams’ novel was a hilarious read until it wasn’t anymore. It is somehow a totally exaggerated caricature of the cruise ship and well-being industries and on the other hand, from the middle of the novel on, I was wondering if the plot actually takes place on a cruise ship or if much rather the staff are actually patients of a psychiatric ward for whom the “cruise ship” is a kind of simulation of real life.

The cruise liner offer all a tourist might want to ask, there is no need to leave it since you have several restaurants serving all tastes, all kinds of shops and treatments to make your stay a perfect break-out. It doesn’t matter that the staff is hardly trained, they are friendly and the guest is king. Just as the employees are pretend-professionals, all aboard is just fake and serving a superficial image of perfection. Had social media not been invented yet, this cruise liner would surely underline the need for it.

Ingrid’s past is slowly revealed throughout the novel. That she more or less fled her former life is obvious, however, the reasons remain in the dark for a long time. The non-life she leads has become the perfect escape and spending hours in her small cabin staring at the ceiling is all she wants to do. The mentorship programme forces her to get out of her cave and think about herself and her life. Keith is the ultimate travesty of a guru. His concept is quite limited but with enough cold water and matcha tea he can create a spiritual atmosphere to impress his underlings.

This might all be very funny if it wasn’t for the fact that it seemed much too real to me. Even though the cruise ship is a special setting, what happens there is not too far from our life that has become more online fake than real for many and where behind the sparkly facade, you can find highly insecure and troubled people. Reckless gurus can easily become leaders spreading their nonsense and making masses of people follow their rules not matter how senseless.

A novel you can laugh out loud while reading but which leaves you with an uneasy feeling when thinking about what you’ve just read.

The Odyssey is a novel about a woman working on a cruise ship whose avoidance of life and the world on dry land is tested by an employee improvement programme. Ingrid works in rotating roles on a huge cruise ship, where all training comes through her tablet and she might be called up to do almost anything. On her days of shore leave, she gets very drunk wherever they've docked. When the ship's strange captain Keith, who thinks himself some kind of guru, picks her for an employee mentorship, suddenly Ingrid faces up to some memories. At the same time, the ship seems to be falling into disrepair.

I was intrigued by this book as it was pitched as similar to Ballard's High Rise, which it is in some respects, with the closed off cruise ship gradually decaying, though The Odyssey is much more focused on one person's mental state than the cruise ship itself. It explores Ingrid's regimented life on the ship, and her memories of the past, including her husband and her alcoholism, and you watch as she makes various decisions (including having her finger cut off) as she tries to reconcile these. The first person narration feels similar to other books focused on a narrator with a strict regimen who is trying to avoid the past or their lack of a future, though the setting does make this one feel different.

One thing I was disappointed by was the fact that the cruise ship setting isn't really explored as much as you might expect, especially not as things start to turn weird and twisted. I would've liked more of it, whether the Japanese obsession of the captain or what was going on with some of the other employees Ingrid knows, as it is a distinctive and unusual setting for literary fiction.

The Odyssey explores an alcoholic character whose avoidance of their past and future has led them to live a permanent present on a strange cruise ship. The protagonist is interesting and the narrative voice is readable, though as it's quite short, I felt there could've been a bit more of the weirdness.

This was such a unique and interesting read. It was well written with a great storyline and great characters and a protagonist that I found really endearing and relatable. The setting was interesting and I found myself both laughing and blinking back tears as I navigated Ingrids journey with her. I really enjoyed it and I love the front cover too.