Books about fathers and sons can be funny, heart-wrenching, perceptive, and illuminating, just like this one – particularly when a son discovers more than he expected about his father.

Daniel Mendelsohn is an American author, classics scholar and lecturer, memoirist, essayist and translator. He has used a light touch while weaving this story about his 81-year-old father, Jay, a retired research scientist, who decides to sit in on a semester of college seminars on The Odyssey by Homer, conducted by his son.

The pair then embark on a Mediterranean cruise, with the theme of retracing Odysseus’ epic travels, and all the while Daniel is discovering more and more about his father, seemingly a tough, unemotional man for whom mathematics and striving hard were the most important things in life.

If The Odyssey is something you read years ago, or you’ve been meaning to read it for decades, then this is the best reminder and introduction for you. Not only does Mendelsohn make the epic poem come to life, he puts flesh on the bones of other epics such as The Iliad.

His book moves seamlessly but with intent between discussions at his student seminars, punctuated by his octogenarian father grumpily maintaining that Odysseus is not really a hero; and the same father showing how charming and mellow he can be with those same students or fellow passengers on the Mediterranean cruise.

The chronological analysis of Homer’s epic poem runs parallel to the revealing of unknown details about Jay Mendelsohn’s life.

A final touch in this multi-layered memoir is that the wife of one of his father’s oldest friends recognises that Daniel is emulating Telemachus, son of Odysseus, who had grown up without his father and travels to discover what he can about him.

Daniel and Jay’s cruise was unable to reach Ithaca, Odysseus’ home, satisfying the adage that the journey is better than the destination. The Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, whose works have been translated by Daniel Mendelsohn, put it best in his 1911 poem ‘Ithaca’:

As you set out on the way to Ithaca
Hope that the road is a long one,
Filled with adventures, filled with discoveries.

For Daniel Mendelsohn and his readers, it proves just such a journey.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville