The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus - pocketboek

there are no bent or torn pages and there is no writing on the inside of this book, Ask readers for some adjectives to describe the fiction of Margaret Atwood and most would submit "intense, cerebral, futuristic, feminist," or just plain "weird." Only the most astute would add "funny" to the list. But with The Penelopiad--Atwood's fictional autobiography of the mythic Greek character Penelope, devoted wife of Odysseus and vessel of considerable intrigue in Homer's towering Odyssey--Atwood does the improbable. She resurrects a shadowy literary figure and charms the pants off of us while offering keen analysis (however subjective) of Penelope's motivations. And she makes us chuckle. Coming on the heels of the eye-glazer that was Oryx and Crake, that's something. Atwood fans are well advised to explore this most unusual work.

In The Penelopiad, Atwood gives us a Penelope in her own words, spoken from beyond the grave. A second narrative stream comes from 12 of Penelope's maids who were slaughtered by our heroine's long-thought-dead-but-really-just-wayward husband. The maids weren't the only ones to feel Odysseus's wrath. A dogged pack of would-be suitors hoping to cash in on Penelope's wealth and status also perish in an orgy of violence triggered by Odysseus's surprise return to ancient Ithaca 20 years after he left to fight the Trojan War, a tale that might sound confusing but not in Atwood's telling. Yet what drives The Penelopiad isn't so much the yarn itself but Atwood/Penelope's dryly delivered insights into the wider human condition vis-à-vis her infamous cousin Helen of Troy, her odious mother-in-law Anticleia, and her brooding (read, quintessentially teenaged) son, Telemachus: "By 'the women,' he meant me. How could [Telemachus] refer to his own mother as 'the women'? What could I do but burst into tears? I then made the Is-this-all-the-thanks-I-get, you-have-no-idea-what-I've-been-through-for-your-sake... I-might-as-well-kill-myself speech. But I'm afraid he'd heard it before, and showed by his folded arms and rolled-up eyes that he was irritated by it, and was waiting for me to finish." Sound familiar? Many such choice nuggets are sprinkled throughout this slender book and while readers may not walk away from The Penelopiad with a richer understanding of Greek mythology (despite Atwood/Penelope's frequent attempts to correct rumors and historical inconsistencies), they will depart with a wry smile. --Kim Hughes