[A] remarkable debut novel ... It is a story of a wounded world in which art allows at least the possibility of healing ... Lennon gives us enslaved people with their humanity intact. It is striking that, in contrast with the common practice among novelists who set their works in classical times, he is careful to ensure that most slaves are named and all are given a backstory ... There is no soft landing on the comfort of mutual redemption through art. Sympathy has to be quarried from this horror like stone hewn from the rock face ... Within this harsh realism, Lennon finds room for playfulness. He does so largely by layering his own Irishness over the classical narrative ... although it conjures an engrossing ancient Greek world, it also makes us feel like its story is happening now. The archaic melds with the immediate ... Lennon’s achievement is to make the Irish inflections seem so natural that they become unremarkable. He does not apply them with a heavy hand—the language he has forged for Lampo moves deftly between the demotic and the dramatic. It is vulgar enough to be enjoyably earthy but sufficiently dexterous to rise without strain into moments of high emotion and serious thought ... Euripides tried to warn his fellow citizens that their democracy would not survive if it became pitiless. By bringing that truth so fiercely alive, Lennon has given us a fiction that does not remain safely historical.
[A] thrilling and heartbreaking debut novel ... a stunning (and stunningly fun) meditation on companionship, humanity and the role of performance in keeping us all afloat ... Most everyone in Glorious Exploits is eternally trying on new personas and attuning them to the audience at hand. In time, that jovial creativity yields an underlying darkness; there can be morbid consequences when we step outside of ourselves to withstand the impossible ... Sometimes grief is so profound that the only thing to do is proclaim it, in our own halting ways, to heaven and earth — even if those proclamations themselves cause more grief.
Breezy, winning ... Lennon’s vernacular gives the novel a shambolic charm, a story told in a Dublin bar by a drunk lurching between poetry and obscenity ... The middle of the novel is essentially a buddy comedy ... This is all fun — I first read the novel in one happy sitting, on a plane — but Lennon attempts to go deeper, with mixed success. One sign of ambition is his choice of play ... This setup...promises an interesting experiment about reversal, sympathy, and power. But instead, the novel seems to assert rather than show or interrogate its central idea, a vague one about the power of storytelling — a phrase that makes me feel like a dutiful A.P. English student.
The book is crass, quick-witted, and dialogue-heavy, making it a quick read to boot ... While I’m sure history buffs will get some extra layers of entertainment, rest assured that even for someone like me who is woefully bad at history and has never taken much interest in Greek or Roman stories, it’s still a hoot.
Lennon overdoes the cursing, to the point where it loses its edge. In keeping with the tone, the writing style is prosaic, with occasional flashes of lyricism. The final quarter feels slightly rushed and anticlimactic, particularly in contrast to the expansive, energetic narrative that precedes it ... Has a strong political message.
Lennon wrote the story in his own contemporary Irish tongue. What sounds audacious—writing a fifth-century Greek story in Modern Irish—simply works. Well, why not? He’s not writing it in ancient Greek. But what might seem like a simple choice is more likely a carefully crafted decision by a gifted writer. The language brings a sense of immediacy ... This book, which highlights a horrendous consequence of war, a loving friendship, is both deeply moving and even humorous. Lennon shows us that, in the midst of despair there is hope, and through art, there is connection.
Larky, spirited ... Occasionally Lennon touches on deeper themes — such as the death of Gelon’s son or the battles against others in Syracuse who object to Athenians being treated well, given their wartime brutality — but this is too busy a book to stay in one place for long. That is a weakness too; the story wobbles about a lot, not always sure what it wants to be. It’s a buddy comedy; it’s a picaresque novel ... But overall Glorious Exploits is still a delight, both for the originality of its conception and its willingness to pursue such an eccentric idea to its logical conclusion.
Very funny ... The novel has a five-act structure and, as in a tragedy, the mood falls as quickly as it once rose. In the end theatre is not enough to win over the people of Syracuse to their invaders. The differences between them are blown open in an outburst of violence that feels inescapable in the wake of war. If staging the play was delightfully flighty and ambitious, what follows is grave and urgent.
Immensely likeable ... Lennon stops well short of suggesting that stories have the power to heal the world, but – just sometimes – they can make a difference to individual lives.
Vvery much a story about the power of stories – and the spiritual and emotional succour they give – though, fortunately, too much of a clever one to fall entirely into the mode of blithe self-congratulation ... The action takes place over just a few weeks, and the novel clips along in a tidy prose judiciously filigreed with some lovely image-making and the odd Homeric epithet ... There’s still a lot to like in the book, even when the sitcom sensibility starts to buckle under the weight of its premise. I was left wanting more, in part because I suspect Lennon can deliver it, but I have no doubt this breezy novel will win him many fans.
Wonderfully odd, riotously funny ... Though it may not take hold of the reader right away, once it does, it does not let go as this superb novel builds to a page-turning crescendo that evokes the great tragedy the men stage.
Lennon’s distinctly modern voice adds levity and wit to this highly recommended narrative about the tragic aftermath of war and the tragic beauty of the human condition.
Lennon’s unique voice sparkles with a darkly comic undertone in this quirkily uplifting commentary on war, art and the surprisingly resilient spirit of humanity.
A tragi-comedy, in homage to Euripides, it is simultaneously shocking, touching, and thought-provoking. Close to home, too.
Recounted in a lively Irish brogue, Glorious Exploits has brio and brass neck. The author expects his readers to suspend disbelief and, rather surprisingly, we do. Lennon is a Dubliner whose father is Libyan, and the vividness of Lempo’s dialogue, his expletive, casual, modern mode of speech, help to achieve what much of the genre fails to do: to make the past feel as if it was only yesterday, and equally important ... By turns grotesque, crude, terrifying, tender and probing, it takes an improbable cast and far-fetched plot and holds up a mirror to our own times.
Lennon conjures the atmosphere of ancient Syracuse, where the action takes place, with terrific imagery ... Lennon, who was raised in Dublin by an Irish mother and Libyan father, has made the ingenious choice of having the novel narrated by Lampo in a contemporary Irish vernacular.
It sounds daft – as though it would jar too much against the setting – and it could certainly annoy period fiction purists. But the way in which Lampo says 'aye' and 'man' and 'poor bastards' breathes life and humor into what can sometimes otherwise be a stuffy form bogged down with accuracy ... a novel to be gulped down in the same way as Lampo giddily does his jugs of wine.
[An] engrossing, surprising debut ... Lennon has produced something truly rich and strange ... He writes with a wit and an enchantment that very seldom waver ... expect to encounter a heartfelt, convincing, poetically rendered world that, whether novice or Regius professor, you will not recognize, for the reason that Lennon, the wanderer from the 'tin islands', has conjured it less out of the ancient world's seas than the ocean of his own defiantly individual sensibility.
What follows is a hugely entertaining yarn of ‘let’s do the show right here’ ups and downs, and, more seriously, a reminder of how both art and love keep humanity alive. It’s brilliantly imagined, right down to the fishy fug of the taverns, and I promise you won’t walk away dry-eyed.
