Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Penguin Books)
As I started reading the books for the Debut Fiction Prize so late I was aware that this was the overall winner as I started it, and as I've enjoyed all the books so far (and one is one of my top reads of the year) this one had an awful lot to live up to.
Again on paper the book was right up my street:
An exhilarating, fiercely original story of brotherhood, war and art, and of daring to dream of something bigger than ourselves.
It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected, and hanging on by the slimmest of threads.
Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. When they take to visiting the nearby quarry, they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives.
And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. A proper performance to be sung of down the ages. Because after all, you can hate the Athenians for invading your territory, but still love their poetry.
But as the audacity of their enterprise dawns on them, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between enemies and friends. As the performance draws near, the men will find their courage tested in ways they could never have imagined...
The author is also based in Norwich so another tick in its favour...
Sadly the book wasn't quite my cup of tea, I had hoped that it was just the abridged Book at Bedtime version that wasn't for me and that the full book would connect.
I can't quite put my finger on why the book didn't work for me. The story was interesting, I knew both Euripides plays being performed and the characters/setting were strong. I also quite liked the way the characters spoke in a vernacular way, it just left me cold and I didn't find it either a comedy or a tragedy.
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at the discussions where the winner was chosen to find out why this one won - it was good but just not a winner in my mind.
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