Publishers Weekly
02/14/2022
A young British woman employed on a surreal cruise ship is at the center of Williams’s stylish if cold latest (after Supper Club). The protagonist, Ingrid, is devoted to her work aboard the WA, a gargantuan vessel with a “surf simulator, ice-skating rink, outdoor zip line,” and floating restaurant, helmed by the mysterious Keith, a guru-like figure preoccupied by the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi. Ingrid shuffles through many onboard jobs, from working in a gift shop to the ship’s nail salon, and, in the book’s final third, to lifeguarding (ironic, since she can’t swim). Early on she is inducted into a shadowy inner circle called “the program” in which she meets periodically with Keith to discuss wabi-sabi and recall traumatic memories from her past. Soon, she is promoted to a managerial role, a development that alienates her two closest friends. The prose is generally excellent and occasionally razor-sharp (describing Ingrid’s pre-WA void, “The getting never really felt as good as the wanting, but the not-getting felt fucking catastrophic”); unfortunately, the plot is meagre and overly self-conscious. Ingrid belongs to a particular breed of disaffected, Moshfeghian narrator, but here there’s more affect than substance. In the end, this feels eccentric for eccentricity’s sake. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2022
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One of The AV Club's Books to Read in April
One of Southern Living’s Best Beach Reads of 2022
“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
“Utterly sharp, slyly humorous, and at times devastating in its courageous attempts to make sense of extreme loneliness. The Odyssey is a wildly original dystopian satire about the desire and struggle to forge human connection and the craving for some semblance of progress and order when one’s life has fallen apart. Startlingly unique and beautifully written.” —Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face
“Deliciously unpredictable . . . an entertaining examination of work, the lengths we go to feel a sense of belonging, and how difficult it can be to navigate the ever-shifting seas of friendship and love . . . I have never read anything like this, which is a testament to Lara Williams’s craft, as well as her fearlessness in diving into the more absurd, cringeworthy, and downright uncomfortable aspects of life.” —Mateo Askaripour, author of Black Buck
“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
“Tantalizing. . . . Readers who enjoy Melissa Broder and Ottessa Moshfegh will appreciate this surreal trip through a troubled woman’s psyche.” —Booklist
“Takes the reader on a memorable journey.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Vivid and compulsive . . . an addictive and intriguingly dark (if not profound) take on an ancient narrative.” —The New Statesman
“Big news: We already found your summer 2022 reading pick.” —Cosmopolitan
“This subversive satire on consumer capitalism and the millennial search for meaning is darkly comic existential fiction at its best.” —Culture Whisper (UK)
“A fever dream . . . Williams succeeds in satirising the seemingly unmockable: the overwhelming absurdities of modern life.” —Literary Review (UK)
“Couldn't stop reading . . . Original and intriguing, I'll be digesting this one for a while.” —Laura Harvey, Copper Dog Books (MA)
“An intriguing twist on the epic voyage.” —Margo Grimm Eule, East City Bookshop (DC)
“An unflinching and razor-sharp satire exploring consumerism and the monotonous life of a disturbed and directionless woman working aboard a cruise ship. The Odyssey is a bleak and biting ride, with pitch-black humor and a progressively off-kilter protagonist. Reading it is a disorienting experience, with a hallucinogenic feel that becomes increasingly sobering as Ingrid nears closer and closer to her home: both on land, and within herself. Absolutely brilliant.” —Madison Gallup, Northshire Bookstore (VT)
“The Odyssey is a rueful antiheroine's journey full of dynamic absurdity that left me shell-shocked and clamoring for a higher page count. Supper Club catapulted Williams to the top of my (very short) must-read list and The Odyssey cements her place in the echelon. With its propulsive plot and macabre humor, the book is a fantastic send-up (takedown?) of modern life's knack of leaving us always craving more, more, more. If she keeps this up, I will follow Williams into the bowels of hell. Possibly lower.” —Wesley Minter, Third Place Books (WA)
“I love when writers like Lara Williams write an absurd novel like this, making you believe in this little world as if it made sense. . . . I was completely on board from the first page right up when she drops me off on the last.” —Emily Sperber, Third Place Books (WA)
“Perceptive, enigmatic and thought-provoking—I couldn't put it down. Wonderful!" —Amelia Horgan, author of Lost in Work
Praise for Supper Club
“[Williams] decants her first novel into flights, like wine. . . . Confer[s] dignity on the small, quotidian self-adjustments that women are always making in order to survive. . . . This is one of Williams's strengths: an exquisite patience with the emerging texture of emotion. As a stylist, she is subtle and superbly attentive. . . . But where Williams truly shines is, if you'll forgive me, in the kitchen. The food in the book eats you. (It literally changed my dinner plans.) . . . These interludes perfume the narrative, like aromatics in a stock, imparting a depth of flavor that resurfaces stylishly when you least expect it.” —The New York Times Book Review
“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
“[Williams's] voice feels akin to Sally Rooney's: colloquial, precise, at once uneasy about its place in the world and determined to stand up for itself. The supper club of the title could be read as a feminist take on the anarchic men's group in Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. . . . The central theme here is women's oppression by men, and Williams's take on it is powerful and original. . . . The joy of food—its capacity to be so pleasurable that it can subvert niceness—is well described, as is the complexity of cooking. . . . Williams [takes] the material of the domestic novel and turn[s] it into something more explosive.” —Guardian
“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
“You’ll want to feast on this book. . . . It’s truly that delicious.” —Cosmopolitan
JUNE 2022 - AudioFile
This quirky, dark audiobook is a unique listening experience. Five years ago Ingrid left her old life to take a job on a cruise ship. Having been selected for a mentorship program, she essentially turned over control of her life to the ship's captain, Keith. He is a devotee of the wabi-sabi philosophy, which finds much to admire in imperfection. During discussions with Keith, listeners learn about Ingrid’s struggles before and after boarding the ship. Narrator Charly Clive voices Ingrid's point of view in a stream-of-consciousness style with perfect pacing and a tone that matches the character’s unapologetic attitude. While parts of this story are truly absurd and it isn't always clear what Ingrid is doing or why, Clive is engaging and creates believable supporting characters. K.S.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-03-02
Aboard a luxury cruise ship, a woman is compelled to confront her past—and embrace her flaws.
“What you need to understand is that everything is coming out of and going into nothingness. That is the principle of wabi sabi,” Ingrid, the protagonist of Williams’ peculiar novel, is told by Keith, her boss aboard the vast luxury cruise liner on which she has lived and worked for the past five years, in the book’s opening passage. Williams has predicated the book’s plot on this idea of inevitable decay and deterioration, the acceptance (even the acceleration) of imperfection—yet elements of the story, like the concept behind it, can be challenging to embrace. For somewhat perplexing reasons, Ingrid has left her cozy bourgeois life with a loyal, loving husband, as well her well-appointed home and all her clothes and belongings, to move, with only the most minimal possessions, into a tiny room on a cruise ship and rotate through menial jobs, such as gift shop worker and manicure parlor manager. When she is at sea and not at work, Ingrid primarily spends her time peering moonily out through the small, sealed porthole in her tiny room or meeting up with her two friends, Mia and Ezra—a sister and brother who also rotate through jobs onboard—to eat bland leftovers in the crew mess, watch old sitcoms, or play Families, a game they’ve created in which they take turns being the mother, father, or doted-upon baby. “We all agreed being the baby was best,” Ingrid narrates. On land, she mostly drinks—a lot—and makes bad decisions. When Keith chooses Ingrid to participate in an eccentric mentoring program, she is forced to reckon with her past missteps, personal shortcomings, and painful losses—and things get really strange, leading to Ingrid’s degradation, but also possibly…growth?
Williams’ engaging novel takes the reader on a memorable journey, but its destination remains disappointingly unclear.
