Synopses & Reviews
The internationally acclaimed Myths series brings together some of the finest writers of our time to provide a contemporary take on some of our most enduring stories. Here, the timeless and universal tales that reflect and shape our lives — mirroring our fears and desires, helping us make sense of the world — are revisited, updated, and made new.
Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad is a sharp, brilliant and tender revision of a story at the heart of our culture: the myths about Penelope and Odysseus. In Homer's familiar version, The Odyssey, Penelope is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes to fight in the Trojan Wars, she manages to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son and, in the face of scandalous rumours, keep over a hundred suitors at bay. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters and sleeping with goddesses, he kills Penelope's suitors and — curiously — twelve of her maids.
In Homer the hanging of the maids merits only a fleeting though poignant mention, but Atwood comments in her introduction that she has always been haunted by those deaths. The Penelopiad, she adds, begins with two questions: what led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? In the book, these subjects are explored by Penelope herself, telling the story from Hades — the Greek afterworld — in wry, sometimes acid tones. But Penelope's maids also figure as a singing and dancing chorus (and chorus line), commenting on the action in poems, songs, an anthropology lecture and even a videotaped trial.
The Penelopiad does several dazzling things at once. First, it delves into a moment of casual brutality and reveals all that the act contains: a practice of sexual violence and gender prejudice our society has not outgrown. But it is also a daring interrogation of Homer's poem, and its counter-narratives — which draw on mythic material not used by Homer cleverly unbalance the original. This is the case throughout, from the unsettling questions that drive Penelope's tale forward, to more comic doubts about some of The Odyssey's most famous episodes. ("Odysseus had been in a fight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, said some; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern keeper, said another, and the fight was over non-payment of the bill.")
In fact, The Penelopiad weaves and unweaves the texture of The Odyssey in several searching ways. The Odyssey was originally a set of songs, for example; the new version's ballads and idylls complement and clash with the original. Thinking more about theme, the maids' voices add a new and unsettling complex of emotions that is missing from Homer. The Penelopiad takes what was marginal and brings it to the centre, where one can see its full complexity.
The same goes for its heroine. Penelope is an important figure in our literary culture, but we have seldom heard her speak for herself. Her sometimes scathing comments in The Penelopiad (about her cousin, Helen of Troy, for example) make us think of Penelope differently — and the way she talks about the twenty-first century, which she observes from Hades, makes us see ourselves anew too.
Margaret Atwood is an astonishing storyteller, and The Penelopiad is, most of all, a haunting and deeply entertaining story. This book plumbs murder and memory, guilt and deceit, in a wise and passionate manner. At time hilarious and at times deeply thought-provoking, it is very much a Myth for our times.
Review
"The Penelopiad is a brilliant tour de force that takes an aspect of The Odyssey and opens up new vistas....Atwood takes Penelope's braininess and puts her at the centre....Odysseus's 20-year absence leaves lots of room for development; this is just the kind of thing that a retelling of a myth should do....[Atwood] turns a gruesome, barbaric episode into an ironic tragedy of double agents." National Post
Review
"Two things are apparent when you begin reading The Penelopiad. First, this is a writer who is confidently at the height of her powers. And, second, she's having fun." The Vancouver Sun
Review
"Atwood's putting Penelope in the starring role is a fine and fresh revisioning....Somehow (it is a measure of her genius that one cannot quite say how), she makes us hear the voice of Penelope, reflecting in Hades on her life, as if it were the voice of the most interesting gossip you have ever had coffee with....This is a wonderful book." The Globe and Mail
Review
"What...emerge[s] is a startling commentary on the responsibility of power, and of how privilege can shade into complicity. The Penelopiad is anything but a woe-is-woman discourse....adds Atwood's sly, compassionate voice to the myth of Odysseus and Penelope and, in doing so, increases its already great depth." Calgary Herald
Review
"Penelope flies with the help of the sardonic, dead-pan voice Atwood lends her, a tone — half Dorothy Parker, half Desperate housewives." The Independent (UK)
About the Author
Nominated for the first ever Man Booker International Prize representing the best writers in contemporary fiction, Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 35 internationally acclaimed works of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her numerous awards include the Governor General's Award for The Handmaid's Tale, and The Giller Prize and Italian Premio Mondello for Alias Grace. The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye, Alias Grace, and Oryx and Crake were all shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, which she won with The Blind Assassin. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and has been awarded the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit and the French Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres among many others; she is a Foreign Honorary Member for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in Toronto.
Reading Group Guide
The internationally acclaimed Myths series brings together some of the finest writers of our time to provide a contemporary take on some of our most enduring stories. Here, the timeless and universal tales that reflect and shape our lives–mirroring our fears and desires, helping us make sense of the world–are revisited, updated, and made new.Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad is a sharp, brilliant and tender revision of a story at the heart of our culture: the myths about Penelope and Odysseus. In Homer’s familiar version, The Odyssey, Penelope is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes to fight in the Trojan Wars, she manages to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son and, in the face of scandalous rumours, keep over a hundred suitors at bay. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters and sleeping with goddesses, he kills Penelope’s suitors and–curiously–twelve of her maids.
In Homer the hanging of the maids merits only a fleeting though poignant mention, but Atwood comments in her introduction that she has always been haunted by those deaths. The Penelopiad, she adds, begins with two questions: what led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? In the book, these subjects are explored by Penelope herself–telling the story from Hades — the Greek afterworld - in wry, sometimes acid tones. But Penelope’s maids also figure as a singing and dancing chorus (and chorus line), commenting on the action in poems, songs, an anthropology lecture and even a videotaped trial.
The Penelopiad does several dazzling things at once. First, it delves into a moment of casual brutality and reveals all that the act contains: a practice of sexual violence and gender prejudice our society has not outgrown. But it is also a daring interrogation of Homer’s poem, and its counter-narratives — which draw on mythic material not used by Homer - cleverly unbalance the original. This is the case throughout, from the unsettling questions that drive Penelope’s tale forward, to more comic doubts about some of The Odyssey’s most famous episodes. (“Odysseus had been in a fight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, said some; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern keeper, said another, and the fight was over non-payment of the bill.”)
In fact, The Penelopiad weaves and unweaves the texture of The Odyssey in several searching ways. The Odyssey was originally a set of songs, for example; the new version’s ballads and idylls complement and clash with the original. Thinking more about theme, the maids’ voices add a new and unsettling complex of emotions that is missing from Homer. The Penelopiad takes what was marginal and brings it to the centre, where one can see its full complexity.
The same goes for its heroine. Penelope is an important figure in our literary culture, but we have seldom heard her speak for herself. Her sometimes scathing comments in The Penelopiad (about her cousin, Helen of Troy, for example) make us think of Penelope differently – and the way she talks about the twenty-first century, which she observes from Hades, makes us see ourselves anew too.
Margaret Atwood is an astonishing storyteller, and The Penelopiad is, most of all, a haunting and deeply entertaining story. This book plumbs murder and memory, guilt and deceit, in a wise and passionate manner. At time hilarious and at times deeply thought-provoking, it is very much a Myth for our times.
1. What is your overall opinion of The Penelopiad? Would you recommend it to a friend? Why, or why not?
2. Consider the personalities of the women in The Penelopiad, especially Penelope, Helen, and Penelope’s mother. How are they different? What do they tell us about women’s roles, within the poem and without?
3. Is Penelope a reliable narrator? Do you believe her version of events?
4. What do the various poetic and musical forms Margaret Atwood uses to tell the maids’ story bring to the telling? Why do you think she chose to write The Penelopiad in this way?
5. “Down here everyone arrives with a sack, like that sacks used to keep the winds in, but each of these sacks is full of words — words you’ve spoken, words you’ve heard, words that have been said about you.”
Discuss gossip and rumour / truth and lies in The Penelopiad.
6. If you have read other retellings of The Odyssey, compare The Penelopiad. You could look at Ulysses (by James Joyce) or O Brother Where Art Thou (directed by the Coen brothers), and discuss how each adapts and alters the original. Or, if you have read any, compare The Penelopiad’s approach to that taken by other writers in the Myths series.
7. “The heart is both key and lock.” How would you describe the marriage of Odysseus and Penelope?
8. How does The Penelopiad fit with other works by Margaret Atwood? Does she pursue similar themes here as elsewhere? If so, does she do so in the same way or differently?
9. How is Odysseus presented in The Penelopiad, as opposed to in The Odyssey? Why?
10. The Penelopiad is being turned into a piece for the stage. How would you cast it?
11. What are your criticisms of The Penelopiad?
Author Q&A
What inspired you to write The Penelopiad? I first read about the maids when I was fifteen, and they’ve been bothering me ever since. There was something about that hanging — all pretty maids in a row, using just one rope, how frugal — that was not only gruesome but suspicious. The evidence that supposedly condemned them just didn’t add up.
My suspicions got turned into The Penelopiad after I was ambushed by Jamie Byng of Canongate Press at breakfast, and due to my own weakness of will and a Vulcan Mind-Meld he puts on people who haven’t yet had their morning coffee I found myself agreeing to his Myths Series scheme.
What were the challenges and pleasures of writing The Penelopiad, taking it from idea to finished book?
I tried it this way and that, with no results. I couldn’t seem to get the kite to fly. As every writer knows, a plot is only a plot, and a plot as such is two-dimensional unless it can be made to come alive, and it can only come alive through the characters in it; and in order to make the characters live, there must be some blood in the mix. I won’t sadden myself by detailing my failed attempts. Let’s just say there were so many of them that I was on the point of giving the thing up altogether. The task was a great deal more difficult than I’d thought, and not being a mythological being myself, I couldn’t call on the ants or fishes to come and help me sort out the words.
“Do you think Jamie Byng would mind very much if I just gave back the advance and cancelled the contract?” I asked my British agent, Vivienne Schuster of Curtis Brown. By this time I was embarrassingly behind deadline, and the first page was just as blank as it had always been. True, I had quite a few thirtieth pages, but they were crumpled up in the waste bin.
Vivienne’s upper lip is nothing if not stiff — she has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro — but I detected a quavering over the telephone as she said actually she expected that he might in fact mind quite a lot. But that I shouldn’t let that influence me one way or the other. And if I couldn’t I couldn’t, she added staunchly. But Jamie would probably be gutted.
I am susceptible to British slang. I did not want to be responsible for gutting anyone. “Give me a couple of weeks, then,” I said. Desperation being the mother of invention, I then started writing The Penelopiad. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. A door opens and you go through, or else you don’t; sometimes it’s the right door. The result of my rather feverish period of writing is what has now appeared before you.
Is there a question you’ve never been asked about The Penelopiad, but wish someone would raise?
Just one: “Why didn’t you include Odysseus’ dog?”