The Penelopiad by Margaret AtwoodCanongate, 2005

The story of Homer’s Odyssey, retold: a feminist take that focuses on Penelope (who narrates, from the underworld) and the story of the twelve hanged maids (who are killed by Telemachus and Odysseus, after the slaughter of the suitors) . Clever, sometimes forcedly so, but well-written. The device of the maids-as-chorus, delivering interludes in varying styles (an idyll, a love song, a sea shanty, an anthropology lecture, a trial) reminds me, when it works best, of Anne Carson.

Odysseus and his cleverness, Penelope and her cleverness: both of them telling each other stories, at the end. “The two of us were — by our own admission — proficient and shameless liars of long standing. It’s a wonder either one of us believed a word the other said. But we did. Or so we told each other” (173).