So Gelon says to me, ‘Let’s go down and feed the Athenians. The weather’s perfect for feeding Athenians.’
Gelon speaks the truth. ‘Cause the sun is is blazing all white and tiny in the sky, and you can feel a burn from the stones as you walk. Even the lizards are hiding, poking their heads out from under rocks and trees as if to say, Apollo, are you [      ] joking? I picture the Athenians all crammed in, their eyes darting about for a bit of shade, and their tongues all dry and gasping. 

Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits (Fig Tree, 2024), p. 3

As I prepared to go home after spending an afternoon in my local Waterstones Cafe, vowing to myself that I would not buy another book until I had read the ones I had waiting for me at home, on a whim I decided to have a look-see at the books downstairs. Look-see turned into touch-see when I saw a mustard-coloured book with a huge clay jar spanning from top to bottom and decorated with a classic Greek meander pattern. I read the blurb and fifteen minutes later walked out of Waterstones a little bit poorer, having failed the mission I’d set myself but not feeling too terrible about it, instead feeling that whatever was within its pages would be worth that little betrayal of self. Having finished the novel, I can now say that I must have sensed right because Glorious Exploits is one of the best books I’ve read this year and definitely up there as one of the best books I’ve ever read. To whoever was behind the cover design, I really hope you know that you 100% understood the assignment.

Glorious Exploits tells the story of Gelon and Lampo, two Syracusan former potters with a lot of time on their hands since the closure of the factory they worked at. Near them is a quarry (cruelly nicknamed Laurium by the Syracusans) that houses just a portion of the thousands of Athenians that have been imprisoned in quarries all over Syracuse following the failed Athenian invasion of Syracuse, and in Laurium are some Athenians who are unsurprisingly well-acquainted with Greek tragedy. While all of Syracuse is drunk with the schadenfreude of seeing the once great Athenians brought low, starving and indistinguishable from dogs (or ducks as the novel’s opening line gestures at), Gelon, the handsomer, taller, stronger, and more educated of the two men, happens to be a big enthusiast of Athenian theatre and possesses a deified view of Euripides.

When, after a visit to Laurium, he and Lampo discover that some of the Athenians imprisoned there can recite lines from Medea and even better, know of an unstaged Euripides play, he decides to stage both plays in the quarry, using the Athenians as his actors in exchange for food, water and wine. The story begins in this way, and follows the events that take place as the men attempt to stage the plays, with tragic consequences. Within the mix are some orphaned Syracusan children that Gelon and Lampo befriend on a walk one day, who become the plays’ unofficial production assistants, an unsettling foreign ship captain that they partner with, and an enslaved, also foreign barmaid at the pub Gelon and Lampo frequent, with whom Lampo is instantly smitten.

Despite the bleakness of the setting and Gelon and Lampo’s personal circumstances, and the melancholy and loneliness that characterises both men, Lennon’s story manages to pulsate with a vitality that defies this. A huge part of this can be attributed to his creation of an incredibly likeable and fascinating character in Lampo, who narrates the story through a distinct Irish dialect punctuated by much swearing and a very dry sense of humour that will make the book very funny to you if you share it. The novel’s humour often came in the form of an unuttered thought of Lampo’s in response to an annoyance, as well as from the natural by-product of conjuring a story set in Classical antiquity with characters who speak in a modern Irish dialect. On ‘Homer’s chair’, a chair in Lampo and Gelon’s local pub that is alleged to have been the chair Homer sat on during a trip to Syracuse, Lampo wonders:

Is it Homer’s chair? Well, there are many Homer’s chairs scattered across Syracuse, and can they all be Homer’s chair? Why not? The arse is capricious and does not wed for life, and so perhaps, yeah it is Homer’s chair.

Lennon, Glorious Exploits, p. 20

I think it’s a task to mimic liveliness under the backdrop of war, failed sieges, slavery, and unemployment, and Lennon infuses humour into the novel skilfully and in a way that magnifies the story’s tragic elements. 

The novel is a lot about the impact of war, the unpredictability of life, the desire for something (or someone) to believe in and live for, and humanity and inhumanity. It goes without saying that the novel is also very much about art and its impact. I loved how Lennon showed the unifying power of art through the relationships developed between Gelon and Lampo and the Athenians who they ‘hire’ to take part in the plays. Gelon’s appreciation of Euripides is the thing that bridges the gap between Syracusan and Athenian, which proves not to be very wide after all. A huge part of the novel is Lennon’s highlighting of the implications of poverty, education, and opportunity on a person’s sense of self, which he explores in the story through the changing relationship between Gelon and Lampo as their fortunes change with the plays’ development. Gelon taught himself how to read as a child and is mostly respected by his peers (although not for this, which, along with his love of theatre is actually a source of derision in his hypermasculine surroundings) while Lampo, despite his efforts, cannot read and is not respected by his peers for several reasons. I enjoyed reading how just these two differences dramatically informed their experiences of life and I think I found it such a pleasure to do so because of how thoughtful Lennon’s characterisation of both men was. 

In contrast to a woman’s laughter or the memory of a former time, described beautifully by Lampo as ‘soft and delicate’ things, Lampo himself is forthright and coarse-mannered but also deeply contemplative and self-aware. Lennon’s prose in Glorious Exploits is therefore equal parts acerbic and poetic, displaying the roughness of somebody hardened by difficulties and the sensitivity of someone still capable of dreaming of better, someone for whom life has not yet beaten the last vestiges of hope out of. It’s out of this combination, embodied in Lampo, that lines such as the following are able to coexist: 

Gelon looks at me. He’s handsome, with eyes the colour of shallow sea when the sun shines through it. Not [   ]-brown like mine. 

Lennon, Glorious Exploits, p. 3.

In this way, Glorious Exploits has a lot to say about literature and literacy itself. The novel’s comment on literacy comes into clearer focus at the story’s denouement but is present from the beginning in the representation of Lampo’s thoughts and his spoken and unspoken observations about life and his surroundings. Lampo isn’t “educated” in the way we typically use the term: he is illiterate and his knowledge of the Classics comes from Gelon, who taught himself how to read as a boy and tried unsuccessfully to teach Lampo. To some extent, Lampo has a complex about his level of education, but Lampo’s narration of the story disproves any assumptions about what these things actually signify in reality. He is no less perceptive, thinking, or feeling as a result, and Lennon in fact proves him to be all of these things in great measure. The way he ends the story makes this point firmly and in a rather meta way, narratively speaking, that will be enjoyed by anyone who’s into that kind of thing. The way Lennon chose to end the story had me very much in my feelings and that’s really the only way I can speak about the ending without saying exactly what that ending is.

In a very tangible way, Glorious Exploits illustrates the life-giving, restorative, and beautifying qualities of art and speaks directly to those who do not see the immediate relevance of novels, poetry, drama, and other art forms on society at large or on an individual level. With Glorious Exploits, Lennon articulates that relevance and our need for great art, of which his novel is a shining example. 4.8/5

*The book contains a significant amount of swearing, which I didn’t love so if that’s a sensitivity you share, be aware of that going into the book. I’ve redacted those words in the quotes below as well as in the pull quote above.

A Moment For The Dress*…

*some of my favourite bits of writing from the book

‘Ah, it’s a beautiful island we have, and sometimes I think the factory closing is my chance to shake things up. That I might just leave Syracuse and find myself a little place by the sea, no more dark rooms, clay and red hands, but the sea and the sky, and when I come home with a fresh catch slung over my shoulder, she’ll be there, whoever she may be, waiting for me and laughing. That laugh, I hear it now, and it sounds to me a soft and delicate thing.’ p. 3

‘Now, as time goes by, some in the city feel we’ve made a mistake. That keeping them here in the pits is too much, that it goes beyond war. They say we should just kill them, make them slaves or send them home, but ah, I like the pits. It reminds us that all things must change. I recall the Athenians as they were a year ago: their armour flashing like waves when the moon is upon them, their war cries that kept you up at night, and set the dogs howling, and those ships, hundreds of ships gliding around our island, magnificent sharks ready to feast. The pits show us that nothing is permanent’. p. 6

[Lampo’s description of the sight of the Athenians when he and Gelon enter Laurium for the first time (in the narrative)]: ‘These poor [       ] are just waiting to die. I imagine the worst spots of Hades are something similar. Hairy skeletons with a hint of skin. Apart from the hair, the only bit of variety to be found is in the eyes. Glassy gems made brighter by dying.’ p. 9

‘Now you watch these Athenians and you feel like you’re seeing their spirit float out through the nostrils and lips, one breath at a time. You feel like their skin withers and flakes in front of you, that if you only waited and watched long enough, they’d disappear, and all that would be left is their teeth and a few slender branches of bone, white teeth and white bone sinking into the quarry, and maybe some day a house will be built with that very stone, your house, and you’ll lie awake at night with the walls moaning, the ceiling weeping, a second sky dripping onto your little head, and you’ll hope it’s nothing, then wind or the rain, and maybe it is, though maybe it’s them Athenians twisting in your walls. These are strange thoughts. Hades thoughts, but the quarry is a strange place, and a man is not himself in here.’ pp. 9-10

‘I set my attention back to the task at hand and refill my cup; a beetle plops out of the jug and starts doing the breast stroke along the surface of my vintage. Its black legs paddle madly, and I think maybe I should give it a hand, blow it to the other side so it can climb out and live – bestow a deus ex, but that’s not how life is. You’re always alone, and the beetle needs to learn this.’ p. 73

‘The moon is still up, a slender blade that’s larger and crisper than the frail sun. Theros is long gone. The leaves don’t so much fall as rip from the trees. All of them are red, and they skitter along the roads like bleeding stars under the knife of the moon.’ p. 107

‘I fancy some Catanian, but I know Lyra doesn’t like red, so I also grab an Italian white the vintner says is ‘causing quite the stir’. It certainly causes a stir in my pockets, for a great deal of coin leaps up and out of them at purchase. For a bite I get a loaf of freshly baked rye bread, still warm to the touch and flecked with chunks of black olives. Some soft cheeses that Lyra picks out, and we’re off towards the cove.’ p. 124

‘But this isn’t the silence that comes from comfort, no, it’s that strained silence, where you can feel the throb of the other’s thoughts; stillborn sentences that die on the lips before they’re spoken. I want to speak, but nothing right is coming, and so I just ask her if she’s got another stone in her shoe.’ p. 125