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The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Canongate U.S.

Hmmm.methinks I must read the *Penelopiad*. (From the performance: The Penelopiad, published in 2005, is part of the Canongate's Myths series, which feature re-imaginings of myths by contemporary authors (the most recent is A.S.Byatt's Ragnarok). The power of Atwood's The Penelopiad is that her Penelope, captured in myth as the archetypical woman of virtue, chastely waiting for a long absent husband, is constructed as a wholly contemporary voice. Now with two thousand years of knowledge, Her voice is potent not only because it reframes The Odyssey, arguably the most popular myth of all time but because it calls into question the “heroic actions” of Odysseus. Which is the whole point of mythology. How we see the maids, and how we see Penelope– hell, how we see women in myth– says as much about the story as it does about us. Odysseus spent most of his travels battling monsters and having sex (first with the goddess Circe, and then, when living with the nymph Calypso for seven years), while back in Ithaca, his wife Penelope wept and prayed and waited. She has her own opinions about her husband's absence and exploits as well as the unfair treatment and murder of her handmaidens by Odysseus upon his return. I am rather rapidly making my way through Canongate's Myths series and just concluded another: Marget Atwood's The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus. Misunderstood and frustrated with a millennia old narrative as the faithful and patient wife, Penelope offers a retelling of the legendary myth from her point of view. Some, like Ali Smith, have rewritten a myth in modern language and placed the action in the present. Written by Margaret Atwood Libri Reviewed by Jodie Authors taking part in the Canongate myths series have reinvented their chosen stories in a number of ways. I have lived my own hybrid take on The Odyssey, . Others, like Su Tong, Margaret Atwood mixes both of these methods together as she rewrites the tale of Odysseus from the viewpoint of his wife Penelope in 'The Penelopiad'.