Margaret Atwood: The Penelopiad
Like Penelope you’ll have to wait a little longer for comments...
Well, now read. Marvellously entertaining and written with a wittily light touch. Penelope comes across as a real three-dimensional character and not the 'image' she has in the popular mind - of which she is well and sharply aware.
She narrates the story of her life from current place in the Underworld (some nice touches as to what it is like there and the fascinating idea that you can be temporarily reborn into the current world as well as communicate as a ghost/spirit with the world of the living). Lovely reference to the 'glowing screens at which the modern world worship - their temple i.e. a computer screen!
Her narration is interspersed with a series of commentaries, in a wide range of written and poetic forms (lecture etc) by the 12 maidservants executed by Odysseus and to whom she was close (and whom she manipulated, indirectly leading to their deaths). They give a dryly sharp view, from a feminist perspective, of life such as they had compared with that of Penelope - the hidden, unmentioned characters in the story are finally given their own voice.
This is one of a series of short retellings of myths by major authors. Will definitely look them out, particularly that by Phillip Pullman the Good Man Jesus & the Scoundrel Christ as well as the introductory book about myths per se by the wonderful Karen Armstrong.
