Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Olympus, Texas: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel
    Olympus, Texas: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel
    Olympus, Texas: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Olympus, Texas: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel

    Written by Stacey Swann

    Narrated by Karissa Vacker

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    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?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateMay 4, 2021
    ISBN9780593408193

    Related to Olympus, Texas

    Related audiobooks

    Small Town & Rural For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Shipstead, Ryan, Walker, and More

      May 17, 2022

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Maggie Shipstead, Eimer Ryan, Sarai Walker, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millio

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Most Anticipated: The Great 2023A Book Preview

      Jan 9, 2023

      Welcome to our biannual Great Book Preview! We’ve assembled the best books of 2023A (that is, the first half of 2023), including new work from Nicole Chung, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Claire Dederer, Brian Dillon, Samantha Irby, Heidi Julavits, Catherine La

      29 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Minders

      Oct 7, 2020

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 448 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author John Marrs Publisher Del Rey John Marrs’s latest near future, high-concept techno-thriller isn’t so much a sequel to The One (DNA dating app has dark secret) and Passengers (autonomous ca

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Other Child

      Dec 1, 2018

      The Other Child
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The World Of Emma Straub

      May 1, 2020

      The World Of Emma Straub
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      TV Pieces Of Her

      Mar 24, 2022

      TV Pieces Of Her
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      In a hotel in a small town in Norfolk I am listening to someonethrowing glass bottles into a metal bin: toss-shatter, toss-shatter.There are no other sounds; it’s a quiet afternoonbut the one tossing them has a sense of rhythm and I havea sense that

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In Matt Haig’s ‘The Life Impossible’ An Island Adventure In Hope Awaits

      Sep 2, 2024

      Fans of British writer Matt Haig’s “The Midnight Library” – and they are legion – will be thrilled by “The Life Impossible,” which revisits the question of how to live your best life. The two novels follow a somewhat similar playbook, each chroniclin

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Into the Wild: The Millions Interviews Alden Jones

      Aug 24, 2020

      I’m not saying memoirists should never use marriage as a final plot point. But if we can choose something else, if we resist that expectation, we can ask the culture to consider other ways women come to resolution. The post Into the Wild: The Million

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Of Course America Fell for Liquid Death

      Mar 14, 2024

      When you think about it, the business of bottled water is pretty odd. What other industry produces billions in revenue selling something that almost everyone in America—with some notable and appalling exceptions—can get basically for free? Almost eve

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      2 Students Allegedly Cheated Apple Out Of Nearly $900,000 In Fake iPhone Scheme

      Apr 5, 2019

      Prosecutors say it was an elaborate deception that involved roping in friends and family, while using nonsensical pseudonyms and a slew of mailing addresses. The plot seems to have come from China.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Murder Map

      Oct 27, 2022

      Murder Map
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Chuck Tingle Goes Mainstream…ish

      Jul 19, 2023

      "As a buckaroo on the autism spectrum, I’ve come to a place where I’m fine being a sort of outsider." The post Chuck Tingle Goes Mainstream…ish appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ann Beattie

      Sep 15, 2017

      I’d started to visit Olivia more often because it was obvious she was lonely. The ALS lady who’d been moved to Hopkins had been Aunt Olivia’s closest friend, leaving aside Merton Hillstead, who actually went home. Even the friendly paperboy who somet

      23 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      April Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Apr 1, 2022

      This month's preview features three books by Millions staffers: Emily St. John Mandel, Ed Simon, and Bill Morris. The post April Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Blood Oranges

      Jul 24, 2019

      Blood Oranges
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Yellow Is the Color of Choices

      Dec 10, 2023

      For whatever reason, when she sees me each weekend, Megan still hugs me like when she was five. Her skinny arms wrap around my waist, and her eyes squeeze tight like she’s absorbing me into her skin. This is both heartening and heart-wrenching. I wan

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Inheriting Presents: "Specially Processed" by Self Evident

      Jul 18, 2024

      This week, we bring you a special bonus episode from our friends at the podcast Self Evident: Asian America's Stories.For so many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Spam is a beloved classic food, showing up in everything from musubi to fried ric

      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Olympus, Texas

    4/5

    54 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      If you've ever done any reading about the Greek gods and goddesses and the messy, immortal family dynamic that they've got going on, you'll have a head start with Stacey Swann's novel Olympus, Texas. Although her novel is about human beings, it's not hard to see the parallels, starting with the very title of the novel. This is not gods behaving badly but rather mortals behaving badly, though no less interesting for the change. For those who don't have a close knowledge of the gods, that is actually no impediment here; the story will still be a captivating wreck without the mythological backstory.

      The Briscoe clan in Olympus, Texas is as close to the town's first family as it gets. They have money and influence and scandals galore. March Briscoe is returning home from a two year self-imposed exile after he was very publicly discovered sleeping with his brother Hap's wife, Vera. Neither Hap nor June, the boys' mother, has forgiven March for the damage he's done to their family and they'd prefer if he had stayed away. His arrival not only reopens old wounds but it plays a part in a new and terrible tragedy. Taking place over just six days, with sections of the novel labeled by the day of the week and with short chapters within the section labeled for the origin stories of the characters, their feelings, and their relationships, the novel is epic in scope.

      The major characters here are Peter, the powerful patriarch of the family (Zeus), who has strayed often over the years and fathered several children outside his marriage; June, the matriarch (Hera), who has tolerated, forgiven, or ignored her husband's foibles but has a spine of steel of her own; Hap, their oldest son (Vulcan), who is a hard worker and always felt over shadowed by his younger brother despite being the one who manages to marry the beautiful Vera (Venus); March, the younger brother (Mars), who has an explosive temper and riles everyone up; and twins Arlo (Apollo) and Artie (Artemis) who are Peter's children by another woman but have been welcomed into the Briscoe clan by June and who are trying to figure out their respective futures. The secrets and shifting alliances between these complicated characters and the convoluted family dynamics come together in great shows of destruction and demolition. There is much wrath and ruin, love and death, cheating and vengeance, and sound and fury as all of the hallmarks of the mythological gods' worst (and rarely the best) natures are placed on show. Even March's dogs are named Romulus and Remus. If you ever needed proof that the gods on Olympus were just bigger, more over the top reflections of the human family, this novel highlights this truth in ways you can't miss.

      The novel is as sprawling as the Briscoe family tree. The characters are not necessarily likeable, and without the cache or divine gifts of the Greek gods and goddesses, they come off as selfish and terribly, humanly flawed. The messes they make and then leave in their wake are outsized and probably unredeemable even with the glimmer of hope in the end. As Peter says on the second to last page, "It seems like we're all armed with sharp knives we can barely control." But those readers who enjoy a good family dysfunction tale will likely find this satisfying.
    • 4/5
      This book was like a soap opera, featuring the large Briscoe family of Olympus, Texas and their wide assortment of scandals and bad behavior. It was quite entertaining!
    • 4/5
      As I spied this book on my TBR shelf last week I couldn't remember who had suggested this read for me. Days later I saw some of my favorite authors recommend books of 2021 and there it was, on Elin Hildebrand's favorites of the year. So with that being said, I had to get a mind set on how this book was plotting and setting up and it was not only a surprise but different story lines than I've read in a long time. It was a great story about true trials and tribulations of a family in Texas.
    • 5/5
      There's not a god in sight in this small Texas town, but there's plenty of hubris. A very large contingent of characters does not diminish the impact of difficult sibling and marital conflicts. Let's start with patriarch Peter, father to twins Artie (female, poorly named) and Arlo by Lee; and, with his wife Jane, father to Hap and March (men) and Thea. Got that? March has a temporary violence derangement syndrome that seems to kick in mostly when his brother Hap is around, oh yeah, and he also has a fling with Hap's wife Vera. Arlo is a fairly successful singer and his twin Artie manages his career until she falls in love with Ryan, who works for Hap. Ryan's family, formerly prominent in Olympus, had a string of financial setbacks and is usurped by Peter, leaving bad blood that could doom Artie and Ryan's romance. On the surface, wife Jane has forgiven husband Peter his infidelities, but her boiling long-term resentment has a terrible impact on each child. And then: a "hunting accident". In the tradition of Edna Ferber and Larry McMurtry's Texas novels, this one sounds complicated, IS complicated, but will probably be the best damn family saga you'll read this year. The writing is glorious, upping the ante with every chapter, as each character's inner compass (or lack thereof) is revealed and the reader's sympathies move fluidly towards a satisfying ending.

      Quotes: "The women she knows split between those that pity her, those that judge her, and those that pity and judge her."
    • 4/5
      Dysfunctional family, messy lives and a nod & a wink to the mythological Gods. March, (Mars) the prodigal son has returned to his home town. Banished two years previous for sleeping with Vera, (Venus) his brother's wife. He plans, hopes for a chance to make restitution, but plans, as they often do, go away from the very beginning. Although his father Peter (Zeus) is glad to see him, the same cannot be said about his mother June, (Hera) and his brother. Although he will not be the only cause for all the mishaps and tragedies that his returns seems to unleash, he will be the trigger.

      A well done remarkable debut novel. Entertaining, fully developed characters, and an intriguing plot that kept my interest. Broken marriages, a terrible tragedy, a long simmering scandal and secrets long kept are revealed. By books end several characters have changed, grown, split apart and faced realizations that are necessary to move forward. Is there anything that is messier than families?

      "Being family just means we don't have the safety of fences between us."

      ARC from Doubleday.