fiction – Page 2 – Maddie Grigg

Reaction to The Odyssey

So, was it worth driving an hour there and back to see The Odyssey on the big screen?

Yes. A definite yes.

I thoroughly enjoyed this Christopher Nolan version of Homer’s epic, with its monster-laden voyage to mythical Ithaka led by a grizzled Matt Damon.

When I read The Odyssey many moons ago, I really felt that yearning for home, the pull of place. However, in the film, Odysseus is reluctant to return, his battle scars heavy and his guilt at the decisions he has made pulling at his internal heart strings.

Classicists will point out deviations from the original poem but you wouldn’t know if you hadn’t read it. And it’s a film, which has a totally different way of telling a story.

Personally, I felt sorry for poor old Corfu in that the hero’s penultimate destination and the delightful Princess Nausikaa don’t put in an appearance.

Scheria, the home of the seafaring Phaeacians, is widely thought to have been Corfu and the Ionian island makes no secret of this connection with one of the greatest stories ever told.

The beach at Paleokastritsa, Corfu, in August 2015 for the Varkarola re-enactment of Odysseus shipwrecked on Scheria

So Corfu won’t benefit from the film at all, while tiny, rocky, inaccessible Ithaka must be preparing itself for an influx of movie fans.

There are many five stars reviews of The Odyssey and discussions over the peripheral role of women in the movie. I’m giving it four because nothing is perfect.

I take on board the complaints about the subordinate depiction of the female sex in the film and jettisoning some of Homer’s nuance, but it was ever thus.

If you went looking for a feminist angle in Nolan’s film then you’d be looking in the wrong place. However, I adored Samantha Morton’s portrayal of Circe and the way she dealt with Odysseus’s greedy crew. I won’t spoil it but the scene is a satisfying shocker.

While the women in the film don’t actually do very much, I did get the overriding sense of male selfishness, power and the endless search for dominance through senseless war, which hasn’t changed since ancient times.

There were a couple of wincing moments for me, such as Odysseus’s son talking about ‘my dad’ and the Laestrygonians emerging through the tall trees in the forest in a scene worthy of Monty Python and The Holy Grail and the Knights who say Ni.

But, all in all, The Odyssey is a story well told, both visually and orally, with the poem’s episodic scenes all working seamlessly from the outset, with Odysseus telling the tale of his voyage to Calypso until he is finally ready to leave her island after seven long years.

And despite the film lasting nearly three hours, the time just romped by.

If you do go and see it, let me know what you think.

Finding my bookish self

I’ve been out of the blogging loop lately, focusing on a writing project which is going to keep me busy for the next couple of years.

However, there is lots going on in the world (earthquake, heatwave, violent death and political farce) but I’m choosing not to obsess about these subjects and am trying (not very successfully) to stop doomscrolling on Facebook and Instagram, which is a complete waste of time and just feeds massive egos and conspiracy theories and lines the pockets of the megarich.

And news websites and a constant diet of updates and cliches are leaving me cold.

The reading is going well, but not in terms of me writing reviews. I’ve had some real duds in recent months, which has been incredibly disappointing.

I had high hopes for The Calamity Club (2026), by Kathryn Stockett, the author of The Help (2009), but it wasn’t for me. I gave it two stars out of five.

I didn’t fare much better with Under Story. I devoured an earlier Chloe Benjamin novel, The Immortalists (2018), but really struggled with this new book, which comes out later in the year.

The very science-based science fiction of Under Story is sweeping in its ambition. Set in the hostile, surreal world of Antarctica, it’s essentially a love story with two central protagonists who take their time to reconnect.

It’s beautifully written but moves forward at too slow a pace for me. I gave it three stars.

Having encountered a reader’s block with new novels other people seem to adore, I had a bit of a book break and then started reading narrative nonfiction, if nothing else but to help with the current writing project, to see how it’s done when done well.

The last bit of nonfiction I read was probably The Salt Path (2018), billed as memoir, nature and travel writing and definitely not fiction. I gave up after two chapters because I liked neither the style nor the whining presence of the author, who irritated me from the start. Well, we all know how that book panned out. Maybe I am more discerning than I think.

I’ve done a bit of research and have started giving nonfiction another go. Mixed results but I completely fell in love with the Bruce Chatwin’s groundbreaking travel writing classic, In Patagonia (1977).

Similarly, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (2023) by David Grann is unputdownable, telling the true story of what happened when a naval vessel hit rocks off the South American coast in 1740. Piecing together the story through solid historical research and strong primary sources, Grann has produced a knockout of a book. I was hooked by it.

After failing to ‘get’ an award-winning memoir that had been recommended to me (too highbrow and about a wealthy family I didn’t care much about), I was delighted to then plunge into Great Uncle Harry: A Tale of War and Empire (2024) by Michael Palin, a writer who takes a family story and turns it into a search for answers in this compelling biography, travelogue and history book. Palin is such an empathetic and kind sort of a chap and his writing reflects his humanity.

I’m now reading two novels: A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) by Amor Towles (my day book) and the beautiful There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak (2024), which I turn to at night because I have a back-lit Kindle so I don’t disturb Mr Grigg when he’s trying to sleep.

So, you can see I haven’t been completely idle in this ennui-inducing heatwave, which is turning us all into gibbering wrecks.

More from me later in the week, I think. In the meantime, if you have any narrative nonfiction recommendations, I’m all ears.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

Taking a break

Just to let you know, the blog is taking a back seat for a while.

I’ve had lots of things going on and I’m currently knee-deep in work around the publication of new novel by an indie press. It’s due out in the autumn – more news to follow.

Have a lovely summer, and maybe catch up with you through posts on my Instagram and Facebook pages, although these will also be a bit sporadic over the coming months.

Love, Maddie x

May book reviews

I’m ploughing my way through another long book, which I’m enjoying but haven’t finished yet.

It’s The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett, who wrote The Help. It turns out her latest novel, which has just been published, is longer than I first thought.

I’m also in the final copy edit stage of my own novel, which is being published in the autumn. Can’t say too much about it yet but I will reveal all in due course.

At the same time, I’m doing some in-depth research for a narrative non-fiction story where the ancestor I share with Ernest Hemingway will take centre stage. This is a project involving a half-circumnavigation of the world so will take a few years.

I’ve read three books this month but only one of them is worth telling you about. The other two were thrillers but not very thrilling.

So here goes. And it is a good ‘un.

Whistler by Ann Patchett *****

Contemporary fiction (304 pages). Publication date expected 2 June 2026

A chance meeting in a New York art gallery leads the fifty-something protagonist into a myriad of memories in this quietly reflective novel about family, relationships and love.

English teacher Daphne and her husband realise the elderly man who appears to be stalking them is, in fact, her ex-stepfather, book editor Eddie Triplett, who she hasn’t seen since she was nine. The encounter sends Daphne down unexpected paths, sifting through a painful period in her childhood and a dramatic incident she’s never really talked about with anyone else since.

Her conversations and interactions with Eddie – a lovely, kind man – enable Daphne to think about her past and make sense of everything that happened all those years ago and the complex layers – and people in her life – that underpin it.

It’s an astonishing novel and Patchett is an astonishing writer, who takes something so relatively simple and transforms it into a deep and meaningful story about what it is to be loved and respected. I coldn’t put it down.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance review copy of Whistler.

March book reviews

Two standout books this month, a pretty good one and two stinkers.

I won’t be reviewing that last pair here – they have a connection in that they are just far too long. I don’t mind 600 pages when the story and characters are compelling but get bored when the writer takes ages to get to the point while all along the way trying to impress the reader with style over content.

I admit to having the attention span of a goldfish. The sweet spot for me is around the 300-page mark, but I’m not averse to an immersive, long novel, such as The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (771 pages), Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (560) and The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (504).

How about you?

This month, as well as putting page length under each title, I’m taking a leaf out of the blog, Is This Mutton, by one of my oldest friends, and classifying the book according to genre.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for advance review copies of these novels.

I’m hoping for good things next month, with Elizabeth Strout, Colm Tobin and Ann Patchett on my to-be-read pile.

Love Lane by Patrick Gale ****

(Literary, historical fiction, 284 pages. Expected publication 26 March 2026)

After reading A Place Called Winter several years ago, I wondered what might have happened to the central character, Harry Cane. He was the young man shunned by his family for his homosexuality and exiled to the Canadian prairies from Edwardian England to make a new life for himself.

Love Lane revisits Harry as an older man, who, cruelly, has to head back home after a lifetime in Canada and now, in effect, exiled to England.

You don’t need to have read the first book to enjoy this sequel but I think it probably helps.

Harry is now older and wiser and, back in England, meets his daughter, her husband and grandchildren.

Through their stories, we get to know more about life before and after the Second World War and the social hardships faced by the characters. Theirs are ordinary lives, but there is no such thing as ‘ordinary’, everyone has a story to tell, secrets to keep or confide in others.

Patrick Gale writes beautifully and Love Lane does not disappoint. This is a gentle story of heartbreak, horror, love and the bonds that bind families together.

Natural Disaster by Lisa Owens ***

(Contemporary fiction, adult, literary -208 pages. Publication date: 25 June 2026)

The novel centres around one day in the life of a young mother of two. But it’s not just any day – it’s the last one before she goes back to her job after maternity leave.

Our heroine decides to make it a special day for the children – precocious Felix, aged four, and his baby brother, Rudy. However, all is not sweetness and light and the day deteriorates almost as soon as it starts, especially as she finds a female ‘item’ in her husband’s bag which is not hers.

She battles through the day alone, because he is working away, and everything seems to go wrong. She wants it to be a lovely day for both of her children but reality strikes, over and over again.

Some very funny scenes in this novel, especially the struggles in a corner shop with a double buggy and storytime in the local library.

The book will appeal to all parents – especially to mothers of children who were born close together but are now perhaps a bit older and don’t require the constant supervision and stimulation needed for younger ones.

I think if you have children of this age, the frustration and difficulties could be too raw and just hit home a little too hard.

Well written, funny, with a likeable central character who bears the guilt of working mothers everywhere and trying to do the right thing for her children.

A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia ****

(Literary, historical fiction – 288 pages. Publication date 14 April 2026)

This is an extraordinary novel. I didn’t expect to enjoy it but I was completely hooked by the characters’s journey and the quality of the writing.

Based on the true story of the author’s grandparents, the novel is about David, a handsome Catholic priest, and Margaret, a progressive theology teacher, who find themselves falling in love.

It’s a slow-burning, intense novel but beautifully written, particularly the later parts where they ‘find’ each other and the sections where Margaret is remembering, through the haze of old age and dementia, her past life.

The two main characters are very well drawn and we empathise with them in their struggle against forbidden love. There were stories from David’s public school background which were truly heartbreaking.

This was a tender, sensitve and terrific story. I would have given it five stars but felt perhaps the in-depth research was a little intrusive and felt slightly forced during their many conversations.