An answer to questions never asked

In an effort to read more female writers I decided to start the year off with Margaret Atwood'd The Penelopiad. (Can someone tell me how to pronounce this.  Where does the stress go?)  As the name suggests, this is a story of The Odyssey from the perspective of the patient and devoted wife.  But the retelling makes diminishes her virtues as Atwood so very cleverly shows how miserable Penelope was and that she didn't really have a pleasant alternative to her 'virtues'.

This book explicates some of the more obscure lines from the epic and gives them reason.  Such as the killing of the twelve maids.  Why?  Atwood does an amazing job of explaining that.  She also lets us know that penelope hated Helen.  I have to admit, I feel I understand the epic original better after having read this novella.

About the best part of Atwoods book is to cast doubt on Odysseus' story.  There were apparently rumors that maybe the cyclops was something more pedestrian like a one-eyed brothel owner.  And that rather than being stuck in the Aegean for 10 years, Odysseus was boozing, whoring, and scheming.  I quite like this cast of doubt.

One more thing.  The feminist arguments and complaints in the book were pretty heavy handed, in that Atwood made sure the reader was beat over the head with the inequality of male and female in the ancient Greek world.  It was a veritable bludgeoning through repetition.