Charles Jensen | Writer

I think I read this book right before or right after a painful romantic split. The ex-lovers in this book are harsh but fair, honest, unrelenting, and the mythic overlay of the story of Odysseus are brilliant.

Circe’s Power: “I never turned anyone into a pig. / Some people are pigs; I just make them / look like pigs.”

And then, further: “I’m sick of your world / that lets the outside disguise the inside.”

Or this: “I became a criminal when I fell in love. / Before that I was a waitress.” (Siren)

But it’s probably Telemachus whose voice I know best. The far off rumble of divorce. Who are these people who raised me? Strangers to each other and to me. My story had a happier end than this, maybe. We had no Meadlowlands. But the book, like a memory, keeps that time for me, remembers it so I don’t have to.