My Name Is No One

By: J.C. Graeme, Rod Heikell

Narrated by: Brinton M. Wilkins

Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

If there is a back story to The Odyssey, then this novel by J. C. Graeme is it.

Forget the return from Troy and a band of heroes voyaging the seas and encountering monsters and adventure aplenty while having their way with the local maidens and the odd goddess. In this story of Odysseus, he is a bar-fly in the Sunset Bar on Khios, where he trades stories for jugs of wine with the bar owner Homer.

He takes on a job for a local merchant on Khios to pick up some cargo on the mainland, and while crossing the sea in his little boat, he is blown off course along the coast of Asia Minor. On this adventure, he encounters a whole cast of characters, and maybe even a goddess or two, though they have little in common with the characters peopling The Odyssey as we know it.

J. C. Graeme vividly brings to life the goings on in the late Archaic period of Greek history and relates a more human epic where even the pantheon of Gods who have ruled over things for so long are being questioned, or at least defied, by mortals. Odysseus meets them all, the Anthropophagus, Circe, Calypso, and the Sirens, but not as we know them from classical literature.

In the end, Odysseus finds he is accidentally on a voyage that will lead to blindness, madness, and even a vision of what the underworld is like. And he will find, despite the despair from all he encounters on his voyage and his descent into madness, that there was more wonder and excitement in the outside world than he ever found in a cup of Koan red in Homer’s Sunset Bar.

©2016 Rodney J Heikell (P)2023 Rodney J Heikell

A Fun Re-telling of the Odyssey

I had a surprisingly good time listening to this book. The seeds of the stories in Homer’s Odyssey are there. It was fun to run into characters and events from the ancient story in a new way, and see how this modern version (had it happened) could have morphed into the fantastical, ancient version.

This retelling is grounded thoroughly in reality with a well developed sense of place and character. The descriptions of sailing were particularly engaging. As for the characters, the writing felt like a good balance between modern sensibilities in writing about human motivation and ancient texts more terse approach to describing a person’s inner life.

My only disappointment was that Odysseus never answers the oft asked question of what his name is with “No one.” Granted, the encounter with the would-be Cyclops requires a different sort of deception. Still, I wanted to hear the title in the book and I don’t recall that it ever happened. Maybe I’m wrong though and need to listen to the book again. Which I’ll probably do.

I thoroughly enjoyed the reader’s performance. Usually when I listen to audiobooks I speed up the playback to 1.25 speed or faster. For this book I couldn’t do that: I wanted to listen to it just the way the reader was speaking.

This is good read for those who are a bit geeky about the Odyssey (and not gate-keepers about it), those who love travel in the Mediterranean (from what I learned in the appendix, the places on land a sea described in the book are real), and those who love sailing.

A fun alternative to The Odyssey

I read a couple of translations of The Odyssey in middle school and high school. I liked it so much that as a teenager I claimed The Odyssey as my favorite book. This was an extremely fun retelling of some familiar stories. While it does not claim to be any sort of adaptation of The Odyssey, it mimics Odysseus’s adventures in a easily digestible manner that I really enjoyed.

I particularly enjoyed the performance of the reader for this book. He voiced each character perfectly and made listening engaging and easy to follow. Well done!