The Odyssey

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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. Until one day she is selected for the employee mentorship scheme - an initiative run by the ship's mysterious captain and self-anointed lifestyle guru, Keith, who pushes Ingrid further than she thought possible. But sooner or later, she will have to ask herself: how far is too far? Ingrid works on a gargantuan luxury cruise liner where she spends her days reorganizing the gift-shop shelves and waiting for long-term guests to drop dead in the aisles. That is, until the day she is selected by the ship’s enigmatic captain and self-appointed lifestyle guru, Keith, for his mentorship program. The Odyssey follows an unhinged, depressed, alcoholic Ingrid who works at the gift shop on a luxury cruise line. She’s got that classic dry british humor and is fumbling aimlessly through life until she gets tapped for a special mentorship program run by the ships ecentric captain. The program pushes Ingrid to reflect on her past mistakes while indoctrinating her into a cult like wabi-sabi way of life.

Set on the Microsoft campus in Washington state, Microserfs explores the feudal-like work culture at the company: the employees the novel follows are the serfs presided over by Bill Gates. It was one of the first novels to anticipate a dystopian culture in the tech industry that would soon become the norm, and one particular scene in which an employee slips “flat foods” (such as slices of processed cheese) beneath the office door of another employee, to ensure that they actually eat while working, has haunted me for 20 years. A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by The Millions • A Best Book to Read in April by Town & Country and The AV Club • One of 2022’s Best Beach Reads by Southern Living Engrossing, ambitious, joyful as well as dark - which is so close to the bone and so necessary. I can't wait to read her next book' Emilie Pine, author of Notes to Self 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. I could argue that the blurb doesn't match the style, that the book's style is inaccessible, that the ending is the only good part. But, honestly, this wasn't fun enough to be worth working harder to organize a thesis around, so I'm out.This was fantastic! The Odyssey is darkly funny and thought-provoking. Although I enjoyed the premise of Supper Club, I felt like Lara Williams linged on the surface. With The Odyssey, Lara Williams commits completely, this novel feels more direct and purposeful. This book is absolutely one that I recommend going into knowing a little as possible so this review is going to be cautious, with that in mind. The Odyssey is a story unlike one I have ever read and there were many things I adored. To create an entire setting set no where in particular is a concept that is so fascinating and Lara Williams did such an incredible job creating a vivid atmosphere with some of the most beautiful imagery. I also want to point out that this was my first ever read from Lara Williams and her storytelling is exactly what I had expected/wanted from her and more. This subversive satire on consumer capitalism and the millennial search for meaning is darkly comic existential fiction at its best.” - Culture Whisper (UK) Peculiarly uplifting … 1946 illustration of a scene from The Diary of a Nobody. Illustration: Culture Club/Getty Images So, there is this brand of fiction: "I'm disenfranchised and miserable and self-destructive; and join me for awhile and then I'll reveal my inciting incident and you can empathize with me." And, I'm not not here for that. I'm not an entirely unsympathetic human and I have the occasional millennial (Though let's not pretend for a second that this gen invented the trope, okay???) self-pitying instinct, so you know, I get the brand.

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. 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. 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. This strange, beautiful cruise liner of a book interweaves a biting sendup of corporate, work, and wellness culture with an astute exploration of the emotional icebergs that lie below its protagonist’s placid exterior . . . deeply unsettling and unexpectedly moving.” - Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State Read if you like: Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, artificial flavors, avoidant behavior, wondering what a ‘lifestyle’ is and whether you have one.” - Molly Young, The New York Times

Featured Reviews

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. Things start getting weird, Ingrid’s personal and professional life falls apart and the days she gets to disembark from the ship become less exciting to her. Much like Odysseus from Homer’s The Odyssey, Ingrid is wandering at sea trying to find her way home, or more specifically, trying to find her way to herself. Written by two brothers, this 19th-century comic novel and class satire gives us the diary of George Pooter, a bumbling and generally easily pleased clerk at a vaguely referenced bank or accountancy firm. It recounts the daily tribulations and minor triumphs of his life and mundane job. A successful joke, a moderately interesting anecdote or a bit of gossip provide many a reason to not just get out of bed and into the office, but a reason to live, in this peculiarly uplifting novel. We all have that fiction trope that isn't for us. That fills us with rage. That, just, ruins everything. This is mine; this book was not for me. I didn't not enjoy the reading of most of it, but then that happened and now, if I'm honest, I'm going with: I really freaking hated this book. Supper Club will speak to parts of you that you didn’t know were yearning. A thought-provoking read that will make you hungry for Roberta’s cooking and more of Williams’ insights on women at crossroads.”—Refinery29

Couldn’t stop reading . . . Original and intriguing, I’ll be digesting this one for a while.” - Laura Harvey, Copper Dog Books (MA) 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 yep, another woman driven over the edge by her seeming inability to have a baby, 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? Meet Ingrid. She works on a gargantuan luxury cruise liner, where she spends her days reorganizing the merchandise and waiting for long-term guests to drop dead in the changing rooms. On her days off, she disembarks from the ship and gets blind drunk on whatever the local alcohol is. It's not a bad life. And it distracts her from thinking about the other life she left behind five years ago.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). 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 only elements that I unfortunately didn't like were at times, I felt completely out of the story due to the repetitiveness of Ingrid's everyday activities. Though I am very aware that this was another commentary within the book - how we can enjoy yet equally tire from the tediousness of an average, everyday routine. People could argue then, that Lara Williams perfectly executed that within her writing, and I whole heartedly agree though at times I didn't particularly enjoy it. As well as this, the blurb mentions that the book is 'hilariously funny' but I personally thought it was everything but. There were moments throughout the story that undoubtedly made me laugh but the tone of the novel was so melancholic and so satirically ironic that no moment for me seemed hilarious.

Within this floating world, something darker is taking place. Ingrid is selected to participate in a ‘self-improvement’ scheme by the ship’s enigmatic captain-CEO, Keith. His philosophy of wabi sabi – a Japanese world-view centred on transience and imperfection – requires total commitment from his employees. The ship falls into disrepair as certainties about time and place slip away. All that remains is a relentless corporate culture that asks for disconcerting and farcical sacrifices from those on board. Discussing ones self and the extents in which we can go to to not only feel accepted, wanted and seen but to also mend and forgive our past tribulations. What I particularly loved about this theme was how as a reader it was blatantly obvious and appalling when Ingrid would do certain acts just to feel accepted and part of a group, though she never saw how horrific these requests were. It really made me contemplate in our everyday life, what we may do as individuals to feel accepted and seen even when we inherently know they're wrong; a conversation I had never read about before, but one that was done in such a unique and somber way. In a very paltry attempt to be fairer to the work.... The book features an imaginative hook and the writing is intentional and intelligent.

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. 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. Ingrid works on a gargantuan luxury cruise liner where she spends her days reorganizing the gift shop shelves and waiting for long-term guests to drop dead in the aisles. On her days off, she disembarks from the ship, wasting the hours aimlessly following tourists around, drinking the local alcohol, and buying clothes she never intends to wear again. It’s not a bad life. At least, it distracts her from thinking about the other life—the other person—she left behind five years ago. Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter meets Donna Tartt's The Secret History in this story of female desire, friendship, lust, and, above all, hunger....This novel will alternately make you laugh, tear up, and text your group chat begging to start a wayward dining committee."—Vogue