For Penelope, wife of Odysseus, maintaining a kingdom while her husband was off fighting the Trojan war was not a simple business. Already aggrieved that he had been lured away due to the shocking behaviour of her beautiful cousin Helen, Penelope must bring up her wayward son, face down scandalous rumours and keep over a hundred lustful, greedy and bloodthirsty suitors at bay...
Rather disappointed with this (as I have been with the other two Canongate Myths I have read). It's a good idea, and the bones of the content are good, but there's too little flesh on the bones. It feels as though having been invited to the project, Atwood treated it as something trivial to be knocked out between real books.
I was somewhat trepiditious coming to this after The Handmaid's Tale, which, whilst very good, I found to be heavy going. However, Atwood gives the ghost of Penelope a very modern, chatty voice which is very easy to read. Since the book is also short, this disappeared very rapidly!
Penelope delivers a monologue occassionally interrupted by a Chorus - which is the exact structure of early Greek drama. The Chorus consist of the ghosts of the 12 Maids hanged by Odysseus and the book is as much about them as Penelope in some respects.
There's a common theme across this and The Handmaid's Tale of women rendered powerless by the society they live in but trying to assert their humanity nevertheless.
