Erica Jong's novel retains just enough ancient history and philosophy to prevent it from teetering into either florid romance novel or purely pornographic fluff. Although thoroughly enjoyable, the novel falls short of greatness on several levels, most disturbingly so when the tone morphs out of Sappho's own and becomes disturbingly modernistic.

That said, there were many strengths to the novel and Sappho herself is fabulously imagined. Far from historical fiction, the novel was wonderfully autobiographical in that many loose ends, as in life, were never tied up. We are left wondering about the Pharaoh, Isis, and a bevy of other scintillating characters who simply disappear from the story. Although I was left initially unsatisfied, this ended up being the most realistic part of the story to me.

The Leap itself was chilling; I imagined the entire novel from this vantage point, poised recklessly at the edge of mortality. I am not sure we the readers must even believe that Sappho survived the fall and, rescued by her three true friends, went to live amongst the Amazons and Centaurs. More plausibly could these dreams, this perfection, have come about as Sappho plummeted and drowned? Clearly, the epilogue reveals Jong's disagreement with me on this issue, although I do feel the novel might have been stronger without the fairy tale ending.

This is a hard one to review. I found Sappho's Leap to be poorly executed. The characters and their actions make no sense. The dialogue is horribly stilted. The plot is meandering - maybe picaresque would be a kinder word. In fact, the whole thing feels rather like a comedy, one of those old-fashioned comedies from another literary era where culture has changed too much for you to appreciate the jokes even though you know they're supposed to be funny. And yet, I kind of grew to like it. I enjoyed the adventures of all these foolish humans (and part-humans) and their dumb choices. Jong's prose has moments of pithy beauty in the midst of Sappho's comic-erotic odyssey. Maybe this is what humanity looks like from a god's eye view: silly, but endearing, and somehow moving in its silliness. I suspect if I give this another shot, with different expectations next time, I might like it more.

Just plain silly. Almost like a Rick Riordan novel for grown ups, Jong just whips Greek mythology and what little we know about sappho's life
into a frothy brew that's more soft drink than champagne. What could have been a thoughtful novel about women, sex and art ended up as
Days of Our Lives set in ancient Greece. Only good thing that came of reading this was that I immediately wanted to dive into the richness of Sappho's own fragments.

This is one literary leap that fell flat.