Product Description

In Homer's "Odyssey", Penelope - wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy - is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan War after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumours, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and - curiously - twelve of her maids. In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged maids, asking: 'What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?' In Atwood's dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing. With wit and verve, drawing on the storytelling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, she gives Penelope new life and reality - and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3334 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
'Atwood takes Penelope's part with tremendous verve ... she explores the very nature of mythic story-telling.' Mary Beard, Guardian 'In this exquisitely poised book, Atwood blends intimate humour with a finely tempered outrage at the terrible injustice of the maids.' Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times 'Penelope flies with the help of the sardonic, deadpan voice Atwood lends her, a tone half-Dorothy Parker, half-Desperate Housewives.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent '"Spry" is a word that could almost have been invented to describe Margaret Atwood, who beadily and wittily retells the events surrounding the Odyssey through the voice of Penelope. Pragmatic, clever, domestic, mournful, Penelope is a perfect Atwood heroine.' Sam Leith, Spectator 'An enjoyable, intelligent variation on Penelope's story.' Christopher Tayler, Sunday Telegraph 'Margaret Atwood, with characteristic dryness, acuity and wit, takes on The Odyssey in The Penelopiad, which gives us the wife's point of view.' Erica Wagner, The Times

From the Publisher
3 Hours Unabridged

About the Author
MARGARET ATWOOD is the author of more than thirty internationally acclaimed works of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her numerous awards include the Governor General's Award for The Handmaid's Tale and the Giller Award and Iralian Premio Mondale for Alias Grace. She won the Man Booker Prize with The Blind Assassin in 2000. She lives in Toronto.

Customer Reviews

What Homer never told you
Atwood is a shrewd and witty writer and this book shows her at the top of her form. She transmutes her unwieldy source material - Homer's Odyssey - into a playful, honestly felt exploration of the foundations of love and family. Here the heroic becomes human and the humdrum underpinnings of legend are exposed.
Penelope chafes against posterity and how it exemplifies her as the faithful, stay-at-home wife. She's not interested in being an archetype; she's remembering the awkward in-laws, her uncouth teenage son, Odysseus' stubby legs. Homer sings hymns to Odysseus and his wily ways; Atwood shows us what it's like to be married to a dishonest man. Helen of Troy is here too (she's Penelope's cousin) and she's just like you knew she really would be - vapid, catty, only real when reflected in a man's eyes.
Running beneath the humour is the story of everything that Penelope has lost: her home, her husband, her youth, her friends, her life, her truth. Our narrator is a weary shade, viewing the world from the dim, grey realm of Hades. But having left behind life, she's also left behind the illusions that go with it. Dead she might be but her vision is clear, her humour is bone-dry, and her story is full-blooded.
If you've read the Odyssey, this novel will mean all the more to you. If you haven't, it will inspire you to search out 3,000 year-old Greek epic poetry. Either way, treasure this book.

Expensive Greek mythology fanfic
The jacket blurb for this book is somewhat misleading. Whilst Penelope's intention is to set the record straight as to what really went on with the suitors whilst Odysseus is away, in fact Atwood cannot resist throwing some doubt in at the end as to whether Penelope is really telling the whole story or just trying to spin it. The notion of Penelope being as adapt a liar as Odysseus is fascinating, but is never explored in depth and in truth, whilst Atwood gives Penelope wit and intelligence, there is something about the way she speaks that is curiously anachronistic. Whilst you can explain some of this from the set up (she is in the Underworld, monitoring the world as time goes by), the fact that she is so familiar with using modern phraseology and slang does grate. I also found Penelope to be a strangely passive character and ironically, nowhere near as strong as I always saw her in The Odyssey because Atwood is careful to describe her isolation and lack of allies (apart from the twelve maids who we never really see her interact with). I found this to be frustrating because far from being someone who helps to shape her destiny (particularly by unpicking the shroud at night), she comes across as someone who's really just waiting to be rescued.

Atwood uses the maids as a chorus in the book to give their side of the story and also cast doubt on what Penelope is saying. She does this by writing in verse and whilst it's well written and amusing, it doesn't give them such a dramatic voice and whereas the effect should be to make you emphasise with their fate, I found it too superficial to do so. Similarly, neither Odysseus nor Telechemus rise above cariacture - Odysseus is the classic wandering husband (obviously) full of promises that he never keeps and which Penelope never confronts him on whilst Telechemus is nothing more than a sulky teenager who doesn't like his mum. Atwood points at there being an emotional distance between mother and son without ever explaining it from the Penelope's perspective and this again goes to her passivity - she allows others to spoil him without ever really doing anything to rectify it.

There is no disagreeing with the fact that Atwood writes this with wit. There are a couple of chuckle-out-loud moments in the story but ultimately the froth that you find here is insubstantial and it's certainly not enough to make me want to re-read this. This is part of Canongate's series re-examining mythology and whilst they've got some heavy weight hitters, if they're all as insubstantial as this volume (which frankly, is something that Atwood could bat out in her sleep) then I can't see it as being particularly successful. In particular, I find it very difficult to see how they can justify the cover price of £7.99 when there's fewer than 200 pages here (and at least 20 of those are verse).

Very readable
Canongate publishers have had the excellent idea of commissioning writers to write modern versions of ancient myths, and they invited Margaret Atwood to retell the myth of Oedipus and Penelope; and she has chosen to do this from Penelope's point of view as she tells it from the Underworld - in a very 21st century idiom and with a 21st century sensibility, for instance only half-believing in the gods towards whom she has a nicely sceptical attitude. It is an excellent tale even if you don't know the Homeric original; and if you do, there are of course additional reward as you realize what she has done - and above all, what she has added - to the Odyssey. She has delightfully filled out some of the characters - especially Helen of Troy and Odysseus' old nurse Eurycleia. Her main addition is to explore Penelope's relationship with the twelve maids whom Odysseus hanged after his victory over Penelope's Suitors and the consequences of this for the rest of Odysseus' life. In addition, the spirits know something about modern scholarship, and the twelve maids can produce an anthropological lecture about the symbolism of twelve and thirteen, about the Great Mother and the Year King. Atwood has also used the twelve maids as a Chorus who speak in verse; but I don't think that is a successful part of the book, since the verse is undistinguished and slangy doggerel; and there is also a rather feeble 21st century trial of Odysseus, presided over by a sniggering judge. The humour here is coarse, and takes away, I think, from the subtler wit that informs the rest of this most enjoyable book.