The Penelopiad
The 20th anniversary edition of Margaret Atwood's iconic tale with a new foreword by the author and an afterword by Philip Pullman.
A feminist retelling of Homer's The Odyssey by the international best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale.
Now that all the others have run out of air, it's my turn to do a little story-making . . . So I'll spin my own thread.
Penelope. Immortalized 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 is a tale of lust, greed and murder.
Atwood breathes new life into the classic story by giving a voice to Penelope and daring to ask what led to the hanging of twelve maids.
BUY THE BOOK
Join a book club that is reading The Penelopiad!
Community Reviews
I’m not sure why I had more expectations for this book considering it’s less than 299 pages. For what is was, a quick explanation of Penelope’s true story and the wrongs down the the maids, it was pretty good. It can only be so good though when there’s not much room for details. I feel like if I got more (especially more of the chapter titled “the trial of Odysseus” ) I would have enjoyed it more and rated higher
A book that came to me through BookMooch.com (still on my book diet and doing well!) and it's a rather small book (198 pages) so obviously my brain went into "must read now" mode.
If you've read The Odyssey by Homer or if, like me, you know the myth behind it (with the help of The Simpsons), then this is a good little book to enhance it. This is the story of Odysseus but told from Penelope's point of view. Penelope is long dead and telling her story from Hades, in order to set some things straight.
We learn about why the 12 maids that were killed should not have been, how Helen started the War, how Penelope endured all the Suitors that descended on her castle when Odysseus failed to return from the Trojan War, etc.
The book is interspersed with "songs" and poems but I have to say I skipped those. The storytelling from Penelope was what I was after and it was very entertaining.
If you've read The Odyssey by Homer or if, like me, you know the myth behind it (with the help of The Simpsons), then this is a good little book to enhance it. This is the story of Odysseus but told from Penelope's point of view. Penelope is long dead and telling her story from Hades, in order to set some things straight.
We learn about why the 12 maids that were killed should not have been, how Helen started the War, how Penelope endured all the Suitors that descended on her castle when Odysseus failed to return from the Trojan War, etc.
The book is interspersed with "songs" and poems but I have to say I skipped those. The storytelling from Penelope was what I was after and it was very entertaining.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.