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Book Review :: Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

Review by Kevin Brown

Ferdia Lennon’s debut novel, Glorious Exploits, is set in ancient Greece, fifth-century Syracuse, to be exact. The Syracusans have recently defeated the Athenians in battle, a surprise to both sides, and they are keeping their prisoners of war in a quarry until they die. Lampo and Gelon are unemployed Syracusan potters, so they use their free time to visit the quarry to see which, if any, Athenians know any of Euripides’ plays, given Gelon’s love of theatre. That interest ultimately leads to their putting on a production of both Medea and The Trojan Women in one afternoon.

Lampo and Gelon, as well as the narrator, don’t sound like they live in ancient Greece, though; they sound like they live in twenty-first Ireland, more or less. Lennon, though, doesn’t play that approach for laughs. He simply uses contemporary language and voice to delve into the life of Lampo — the center of attention — as he tries to understand who he is. Gelon is the one who loves theatre and comes up with the idea to visit the Athenians, while Lampo simply goes along with his friend. Along the way, though, he has to make choices that will define the rest of his life.

It would be easy to say that this novel is about the power of art — Gelon at one point says, “It’s poetry we’re doing. It wouldn’t mean a thing if it were easy.” — but the novel is about more than that, as any good art is. It’s about friendship and sacrifice and hatred and love and mistakes. In other words, it’s about humanity, whether in ancient Greece or contemporary Ireland. The struggles and successes are the same, no matter the time or place.


Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon. Henry Holt and Company, March 2024.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites