Insightful, inspiring exploration of Homer's Odyssey
For those of us who know and love the incomparable Odyssey of Homer (and there are many), Dr. Hexter has created a valuable, detailed analysis, taking into account many of Homer's most fascinating subtleties. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to spend time thinking about Homer's meanings and intentions as well as those of his intellectually and emotionally brilliant heroes, Penelope and Odysseus.
Normal Structure for a Commentary
It is the usual nature of a commentary that it is structured with notes keyed to terms in each line. If you want a good introductory discussion of the Odyssey, see Camps, An Introduction to Homer (or for something a little more spicy, though less traditional, see Paolo Vivante's book Homer in the Yale/Hermes series). The introduction to the Penguin translation of the Iliad by Fagles is good, too (though the translation itself is problematic). Commentaries are primarily intended for close reading; but close reading a work in translation (especially in a very literary translation like Fitzgerald's, which takes a few liberties: but the principle is true for *all* translations) is a dangerous game. This book is probably best for giving you some idea of how you *could* apply close reading to the Odyssey if you knew Greek, or for helping a student with weak Greek skills to narrow something down before looking in the original, maybe; the commentaries on the Greek text are more likely to keep you on the straight and narrow (because of their nature; nothing to blame Prof. Hexter for).
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