The Penelopiad

The Penelopiad is Margaret Atwood's exploration of Penelope, wife of Odysseus in The Odyssey. What was she up to while he was gone for twenty years? How did she raise her son and manage her household and fend off all those suitors? And what of the twelve maids who seemed to alternate between loyalty and betrayal and were ultimately hanged?

Atwood alternates between prose sections from Penelope's point of view and a Greek Chorus of the hanged maids told in a variety of styles, most of them verse. They offer a counterpoint, sometimes directly contradicting what Penelope claims and allowing Atwood to maintain ambiguity about a story that cannot, ultimately, be known.

This book was fine. Or at least it was short. I've been hankering to re-read The Odyssey, particularly the new translation by Emily Wilson, and I thought this might help get me in the mood. But perhaps I should have waited to read it afterwards, with the original material fresher in my mind. Ultimately I didn't get a lot out of this story, though it was an interesting experiment.

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