The Suitors: A Novel [Paperback]

Ben Ehrenreich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2, 2007

This audacious reimagining of The Odyssey finds Penny home alone while Payne, a modern-day Odysseus, gallivants around the world on battleships and attack helicopters, waging wars of conquest. A drinking, drugging crew of ne’er-do-well squatters surrounds Penny, eager for her attention. Even their most eyebrow-raising exploits can’t distract her, though, as she angrily pines for Payne. But when a mysterious man with suspicious origins arrives on the scene, the suitors’ precarious pecking order falls to pieces in the glow of Penny’s newly ignited ardor.

Brutal, playful, sexy, and subversive, The Suitors is a classic of its own kind.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Explicitly comparing itself to The Odyssey, Ehrenreich's first novel owes less to Homer's epic than to Joyce's. With his linguistic acrobatics, caustic wit and mix-and-match structure, Ehrenreich (son of activist journalist Barbara) shows the stirrings of an original talent. Set in a never-never land equal parts contemporary America and classical antiquity, the book centers on the romance of the Ulysses and Penelope–like lovers Payne and Penny. Payne gathers a loosely organized rabble of flunkies to assist him in building a palace for Penny, and soon mobilizes them into an army to fight for glory and riches. After a period of happy pillaging, Payne disappears on the warpath, and Penny and her suitors are left alone, wondering if their leader will ever return. Bound by their collective love (and lust) for Penny, the suitors begin to bicker, sinking into sadness and delusion. Ehrenreich is less concerned with his deliberately ramshackle plot than with the glories of his language. With a talent for literary mimicry, he tries on a multiplicity of voices (some more successful than others). As the story proceeds and echoes Homer more closely, the novel's wit ebbs, but for those with a lust for American modernist fiction, Ehrenreich's will be a journey they'll gladly take. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Regular LA Weekly contributor Ehrenreich leaves journalistic prose far behind in a richly imagined novel loosely based on Homer's Odyssey and inspirited by a dazzling display of verbal gifts. The suitors of the title are the parade of prospective lovers who line up on the doorstep of heroine Penny (i.e., Penelope) after her husband, Payne, abandons her. As the novel's Odysseus figure, Payne has built a protective palace around his wife, then promptly assembled an army to fight overseas. In his absence, Penny becomes surrounded by lustful ne'er-do-wells but pines only for Payne until a mysterious stranger appears to capture her fancy and set the stage for her husband's dramatic return. Ehrenreich's odd mixing of psychological insight and full-blooded characterizations with frivolous plot twists and riotous action may not be to everyone's taste, yet it makes for some delicious occasional black comedy. Any resemblance to Homer's classic is mostly superficial, but Ehrenreich's prodigious, Joycean prose establishes him as a writer to watch. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 293 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (July 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156031833
• ISBN-13: 978-0156031837
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 6.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,599,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for me., August 19, 2006

By 

Ondre (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Suitors: A Novel (Hardcover)

I guess I'm not Ehrenreich's target audience. I was attracted to this book because of the notion of retelling the Odessey with some modern slant. Great idea. Potential in there. But that's not really what this novel is about. Any links to the Odyessey are purely superficial.

Sorry, but as far as I can tell this novel was written to convince people that the author is terribly clever. It's not about character. Not about plot. The characters never speak like real people. There's an emphasis on sex in a way that seems typical of young men's fantasies. There was a moment not too far in when the author says, with deprecating self-indulgence, that he wishes the story could end here. Thing is, so did I. But it's obvious at that point that he's going to carry on for as long as he can. It's highly self-indulgent stuff, probably best enjoyed by friends of the author. I say it's mostly about the author being clever, but when a whole book seems focussed on convincing you of that it starts to ring a bit hollow.

I know that there are some folks out there that will like this - but not many. I guess it's highly "literary". He does have some great blurbs on the back by authors that I admire. Okay. Maybe I missed something. But if you like a good story about real people stumbling through life... Well this probably isn't the book for you.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beauty, July 17, 2007

By 

rebecca ellis (US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Suitors: A Novel (Paperback)

This is really an extraordinary, beautiful novel. It is not for everyone--it's too smart to be, too strange and strangely wise. I bought this book and half expected it to be some pale shadow of Homer and found instead a whole world, hilarious, sad, absurd. Did I mention beautiful?

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A romance for the end of times, May 24, 2006

By 

Antonia J (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Suitors: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Odyssey and The Suitors are like bookends for Western Civilization. This book is great, actually funny, filled with longing and sadness. It's a sly satire of our world, but infused with hope for life in the wreckage. I also found it truly, surprisingly, romantic. Not a word I usually use in a positive sense. But the Suitors is, really, a romance, an actual romance, for those of us who live in the decidedly unromantic world of freaks and lazy bums and warmongers and drug addicts. It's moving and beautiful. A major achievement.