Disclaimer: I received an ARC via publisher as a result of
the LIbrarything Early Review program.
One of
the reasons why I prefer the Iliad to the Odysseus is because Penelope. It isn’t Penelope herself really. It is Penelope waiting patiently at home surrounded
by men who want to marry her and steal her money while her husband is out
banging every nymph he comes across as he “struggles” to get home.
I think I always wanted Penelope to whack him upside the head. When I got older, it was also because
Penelope would have been killed if she had, understandably, declared her
husband dead and remarried.
It sucks
to be Penelope.
Seligson,
a Mexican/Jewish author, tackles the question of what Penelope was thinking and
even doing while she waited those years for her husband to return, even when
bards would come to the palace and sing about Ulysses banging away on a nymph.
Seligson’s
Penelope’s solution to the problem isn’t to take a battle axe to her husband’s
head, though I would not blame her. Nor
is to demonize the other women, which is something that we see other writers
do. Circe is good so Penelope must not
be good, and so on. This trend occurs in the most popular retellings, like redeeming
a woman in a male centered story means making all women worse than the men. Seligson
does not do this, and in it is so refreshing.
There is a level of understanding between Penelope and Eurycleia that
speaks at a deeper connect, two women in world where they are not deemed
important. Sisterhood is not the right
word; it is far truer than a
The
story is told through four voices, though Telemachus who starts the story has
the shortest and briefest account. His
letter serves little more than an introduction to the meat of the story. Penelope’s letters make the meat of the story
but both Eurycleia and Ulysses have voices too.
The voices do match the historic literary characters.
The
novella is actually a version of Penelope that deserves far more attention. It presents a more nuanced and fleshed out – finally
Penelope is given a real voice.
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