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

The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus by Margaret Atwood has been lurking in my sidebar for months, in fact it's still there, but it will be moving on shortly. Loaded up on my eReader) The Penelopiad because it combined two of my favourite bookish things of 2013 so far: Margaret Atwood and twists on Greek mythology. Told from the perspective of Penelope and twelve of her maids, The Penelopiad recounts what happened to everyone left behind whilst Odysseus was on his many voyages after the Trojan War. 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. With The Penelopiad, Atwood does the same in reverse: in dealing with the myth of Odysseus and the fantastic world he, Penelope and the maids inhabit, she makes it seem all very plausible and human. Previous volumes have included Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus and David Grossman's Lion's Honey: The Myth of Sampson. The Penelopiad is Atwood's re-telling of Homer's The Odyssey from the perspective of his loyal wife Penelope. Left alone for twenty years when I originally 'picked up' (i.e. Was Penelope as loyal and devoted as she made out to be? "In Homer's account in The 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. (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). Though the myth of The Odyssey has been told and retold countless times, Margaret Atwood takes on the tale in an irreverent and thought-provoking manner by breathing life into Penelope, Odysseus's faithful and patient wife. Thoughts: The good news is that The Penelopiad definitely passed the test of time for me. The Penelopiad is part of the Canongate Myth series. I don't know where The Odyssey, The Iliad (which I presumed had a hand in Atwood's title) and The Aenied differ, and to be honest all I knew about Penelope was garnered from a Year 7 History video, where myths were retold by a man and his You've probably heard that my father ran after our departing chariot, begging me to stay with him, and that Odysseus asked me if I was going to Ithaca with him of my own free will or did I prefer to remain with my father?