Penelope tells her side of the story in the Canadian writer's meditation on The Odyssey, and it turns out that she is just as cunning as her more famous husband—and just as prey to mortal error, as her maids unhappily discover, when Odysseus murders them. Atwood mixes poetry and prose to surprising effect, deepening our understanding of the original long-suffering wife with the same dexterity that Penelope demonstrated in weaving and unweaving the shroud for her father-in-law to keep the doomed Suitors at bay.
