Genre: Mythology Retelling
Published: 2005
Pages: 224
A fresh take on what follows Homer’s The Odyssey by the international best-selling author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband's return.
Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.
The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.
I picked this book up because it was an admin recommendation for a reading challenge I was doing in November and I already owned it. I really liked Atwood's writing style in The Handmaid's Tale, but the same was not true here. And I think the reason for that is that she was trying to emulate the Greek myths. While I typically really enjoy mythology retellings, part of what I like is modernizing the language and writing style.
I did appreciate seeing a different side of the story of Odysseus and I felt like this really showed us daily Greek life and definitely demonstrated that bad mothers-in-law have always existed.
Unfortunately I never really felt invested in this story which made it a chore for me to keep reading. I really wanted to like this book, but in the end it was just okay.
Overall I give The Penelopiad 3.0753 out of 5 stars. - Katie
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. In addition to the classic The Handmaid's Tale, her novels include Cat's Eye, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy, The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize and Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature in 2008. In 2017, The Handmaid's Tale was adapted for an Emmy-nominated TV series and Alias Grace was adapted into a Netflix Original.
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