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: #11942 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.

Slightly disappointing take on an ancient myth
In the Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood retells the familiar story of the Odyssey through the eyes of his long suffering wife Penelope.

Penelope is a strong voice throughout the narrative and is believable as the classical character. There is a pleasing cynicism about her attitude that is thoroughly modern but gives a timeless feel to this re-written myth.

Atwood uses poetry and song in interludes to add extra layers to the story in the form of a chorus of Penelope's slave girls - copying the style found in Greek tragedy. This works effectively for the majority of the book and is a clever take on an ancient form. I would have preferred her to stick to poems and songs rather than also adding a modern day court scene near the end and an anthropology lecture which I felt jarred with the rest of the book.

It seems that Atwood was keen to make the story 'relevant' to our times and she resorted to cliched means to do this at the end. This was a shame as the first 2/3 of the book is excellent and was already making me see resonances with the modern world.

I think it would have been a better read had she allowed it to be more subtle in its 'message' rather than spelling things out at the end as if the reader hadn't already thought 'there are lots of Odysseuses and Penelopes in our world today'.

A bit of a disappointment from one of the world's greatest writers.

Shrewd Atwood - a book of pre-eminent virtue
For as long as I have had an active interest in books, rather than being passively fed the stories through the lips of parents, I have been fascinated by myths. The stories of ancient Greece, of roaming gods, vengeful goddesses, violent heroes and tragic heroines are much more of an education in the ways of man than the pap that is aimed at children and young adults. They are real, meaty and swarthy tales - those told on the hearth and fires of the Peloponnese hundreds of years ago and still resonate today. The first project I did at school was on Greek Myths, and this was soon followed up by adventurous forays into Norse mythology, and tales from the Celtic realms, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Incan and Aztec realms and deepest Africa.

Around the world myth remains one of the strongest binding forces in man's history. Every culture has found the need to tell stories to explain the inexplicable, to give meaning, hope and comfort to the often random acts of cruelty that fellow man and fate deal out to the mere mortal. And so when I read in The Bookseller that Canongate, led by the visionary publisher Jamie Byng, were planning an audacious retelling of the myths, employing an array of the brightest stars of the literary firmament, I was intrigued.

It has been a long wait, but the first of this series is now out. They open with a Short History of Myth, Weight (about Atlas & Hercules), and the Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. Atwood has taken the classic tale of Odysseus, his involvement in the Trojan war, his fateful return journey, and more particularly his vengeful appearance back in his kingdom. The delicious twist that the author has added is to tell the story from the point of view of his wife, Penelope. Overlooked in the book, and in history, by her ravishing cousin Helen, Penelope finally gets a voice. And it is quite a pedigree voice. Atwood is one of the world's finest novelists, and has written amazing work's of fiction. Often with a feminist, or at least a womanly aware perspective, her work is particularly well suited to telling the untold story of Penelope and the twelve maids that were hung by Odysseus and Telemachus, the wayward son.

Another brilliant device is to have Penelope's voice coming through the mists of Hades, told by a present day spectre, looking back but also having an awareness, albeit tainted by her own experience, of our own times. This is shown by her wonderings for the gods, who seem to her to be asleep. As she point out, "In your world, you don't get visitations from the gods the way people used to unless you're on drugs."

Told in tandem with an awareness of the original story, this is a wonderful spin. Anyone approaching without an understanding of the Odyssey will still gain an insightful and wonderfully spun story, which will hopefully intrigue them sufficiently to seek out Homer's masterful original. The only reasons for giving four stars, rather than the immaculate five are that five stars have to be reserved for perfection - and this has certain flaws, it is overly brief, and the story is punctuated by a 'chorus girl' rendition from the hanged maids of Penelope, which add little to the story, and end up being flicked past.

As Penelope observes "Immortality and mortality don't mix well: it was fire and mud, only the fire always won." This wonderful retelling augurs well for the future titles in the series. They are immaculately presented, with crisp pages on tastefully creamed paper. Flashes of red for page numbers, individual illustrations for the covers are all small touches which will make the series a collection to be admired.