PositiveThe New Republic...An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic, does more than reference classics. Here, the act of reading Homer tests a father-son relationship, and the larger meaning of classics for modern lives ... The narrative isn’t quite so straightforward. The book is split into three main sections: The first concerns Daniel’s childhood, the second the cruise, and the third a reflection on the end of Jay’s life ... The decidedly non-chronological structure isn’t always successful — some shifts, especially within the same sentence, leave one feeling a bit nauseated, like driving on a switchback road ... Mendelsohn reflecting on his teachers after he himself has become one, one who struggles with the gap between his love of a work and that of those around him. Many other jewel-like moments and meditations arise in a similar manner. Mendelsohn does not so much transmit the importance of Homer as the importance of loving something.
