The Fall of Icarus
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'Drawn on by his eagerness for the open sky, he left his guide and soared upwards...' Ovid tells the tales of Theseus and the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus, the Calydonian Boar-Hunt, and many other famous myths. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Ovid (c.43 BCE-17 CE). Ovid's other works available in Penguin Classics are The Erotic Poems, Fasti, Heroides and Metamorphoses.
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Can't get past two stars on this for a couple of reasons...
The Fall of Icarus... honestly Daedalus (Icarus' father) first appears on page 11, Icarus on page 12, and he falls on page 14. He was a bit part at best, so very strange to name this book as it is.
Secondly, confusion. I know this is an excerpt from a much larger book, but for me those Penguin 80's and the 60s which are excerpts are at there best when they are well selected so that the excerpt makes sense in isolation - where there is a story that has a beginning and a resolution, where the characters can stand alone. This book brought in character after character cold. I had no idea how they fit together, who they were, what their intent was. It read as a sequence of stories all run together.
I am sure the full Metamorphoses would read better.
