"the penelopiad" by margaret atwood

there's no doubt that margaret atwood is good at what she does, but i've never been crazy about her.  i've read a few of her novels and while enjoyable, there was nothing about them that really spoke to me.  that saying, i loved this book.

perhaps it was due to the fact that i just read 'the odyssey', but i found this novella a brilliant retelling of homer's epic poem from odysseus' wife's perspective.  as one critic put it, penelope is the perfect atwood heroine and i couldn't imagine a better author to tell this story.

atwood's penelope is very sly and sarcastic as she tells her story from the underworld.  atwood has brilliantly made penelope's (spoiler alert for the odyssey!) 12 hanged maids a sort of vaudevillian chorus that pop up to sing witty and dark and sardonic interludes.  

i'm not sure if i would have enjoyed this as much had i not been familiar with 'the odyssey', but in my mind, atwood has pulled herself out of the humdrum and into the sublime.

"the odyssey" by homer, translated by robert fagles

this was actually really good.  perhaps it's the translation, perhaps it's because i've been reading a lot of heavy academic shit, but i quite enjoyed this novel.

odysseus has fought for ten years in the trojan war and is now on his way home.  however, before he can get there, he is held captive by the lovely nymph, calypso, has to fight the cyclops, get past the beautiful and deadly sirens, travel to the underworld to speak with a dead prophet, outwit the monsters charybdis and scylla and a whole host of other seemingly impossible tasks that make my schoolwork seem like paint-by-numbers.

i was dreading this book, but it turned out to be a lot more accessible than i thought.  i could actually follow the story and with the one undergrad course i took in greek mythology, found myself recognizing characters and situations.

i may feel differently about this story after i spend the next two weeks reading about the penelopian aesthetics so i can deliver a seminar on gendered readings of this text, but as a pure piece of entertainment, it was worth the time spent reading.