Plano Reads: An Odyssey

The Brown Bag Book Club will meet in person at Parr Library on Thursday, July 27, at noon, to discuss An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn.

An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn 

Available as: Print | eBook | eAudiobook

When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enroll in the undergraduate Odyssey seminar his son teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist who sees the world through a mathematician’s unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his “one last chance” to learn the great literature he’d neglected in his youth–and, even more, a final opportunity to more fully understand his son, a writer and classicist.  

Mendelsohn’s experience comes to echo the Odyssey itself, with its timeless themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home. Readers who appreciate narratives that explore the dynamics of father-son relationships will enjoy this poignant memoir.  

The author uses a close reading of the epic to illuminate the mysteries of the human condition, and he skillfully and subtly interweaves the classroom textual analysis and the lessons of the life outside it. “That’s how I was trained, and that’s how the people who trained me were trained,” he writes. “If the work has real coherence, all these details will add up, even if they’re not noticeable at first and even if the big picture isn’t clear. Only by means of close reading can we understand what the big picture is and how the pieces, the small things, fit into it.” Revelations for Mendelsohn provide epiphanies for readers as well. A well-told story that underscores the power of storytelling. – Kirkus Reviews

The Brown Bag Book Club will meet in person at Parr Library on Thursday, July 27, at noon, to discuss An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn.