Our Little Duckie

Thomas Jones

  • The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
    Canongate, 199 pp, £12.00, October 2005, ISBN 1 84195 645 7

Margaret Atwood’s new novel is a reworking of the Odyssey, told largely from Penelope’s point of view. The Penelopiad is presented by its publisher as a retelling of a myth, but it isn’t quite that. The story of Odysseus’ return home from the Trojan War would qualify as a myth, but the Odyssey does not, if a myth is a story that doesn’t depend for its resonance and power on the details and language of any one version. The Penelopiad is written very precisely in response not to the myth of Odysseus, but to the Odyssey.

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