A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A bighearted novel with technicolor characters, plenty of Texas swagger, and a powder keg of a plot in which marriages struggle, rivalries flare, and secrets explode, all with a clever wink toward classical mythology.
For fans of Madeline Miller's Circe: "The Iliad meets Friday Night Lights in this muscular, captivating debut" (Oprah Daily).
The Briscoe family is once again the talk of their small town when March returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended, and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be exactly what drag them all down.
An expansive tour de force, Olympus, Texas cleverly weaves elements of classical mythology into a thoroughly modern family saga, rich in drama and psychological complexity. After all, at some point, don't we all wonder: What good is this destructive force we call love?
I didn't expect to love this book as much as I did. I had heard great things but I don't always like family drama books or books with unlikeable characters. This book is a Greek tragedy set in a small Texas town. Even if you don't care for Greek mythology, you don't need to nor would you really notice. I found the parallels interesting, but again you don't need to know anything about Greek mythology to enjoy this book. What I loved was the writing and these characters. Yes, they can seem unlikeable but they seemed so real. Humans are very complicated and I just wanted to keep reading about this family. It's a story about family, love, forgiveness, what it means to be a family and how they can grow apart and can come together because nothing in life is simple.
