The Penelopiad
Margaret Atwood. Text Publishing, 2005. isbn 1 920 88595 1, rrp $22
My brain often hurts just thinking Margaret Atwood: it’s one of those distinctly heavy names, with words like Booker, Feminist and Literature dancing around behind it. No surprises, then, when Atwood—along with Achebe, Byatt, Winterson and Tartt, just to name a few—was asked to contribute to a new Myths series, in which Atwood rewrites Homer’s Odyssey as her own Penelopiad.
What was surprising, however, was my initial disappointment: the first person prose from beyond the grave felt awkward and childish; and irritatingly, I could feel Atwood’s presence behind every word. Could see her, pen poised, thinking, How can I construct this as a feminist text?
Having said that, this story is difficult to resist: it has drama, rage, jealousy; not to mention adultery, violence and a good old-fashioned giant Cyclops. A fantastic, melodramatic yarn; much like an episode of Neighbours, but with less Toadfish and more Trojans.
And how brilliant that a story, first told an unfathomable number of years ago, still finds its way onto our Da Vinci Code-infested shelves. Read it for Atwood’s breathless feeling for the macabre, and her aggressive reweaving of myth, threading new colour and light through the old and faded.
Brooke Davis
No Place Like Home
edited By Sonja Dechiam, Jenni Deveraus, Heather Millar and Eva Sallis
Wakefield Press, 2005. isbn 1 862 54686 X, rrp $19.95
‘I can’t believe that just over a body of water is the difference between heaven and hell,’ writes Irene Guo, aged 12, in ‘Linda’s Story’. Many of the short narratives in No Place Like Home are stories of escape from hellish situations, whether from regimes such as the Taliban in Afghanistan or communist China, or from war in Iraq or Sudan. With the current debate over Australia’s decisions to detain asylum seekers, this powerful collection makes the reader proud to be Australian, but also brings home the fact that simply arriving in Australia is not the end of the hardship for many refugees.
Written with the simplicity and honesty of children and young adults, these are stories of hope and joy at the possibility of a better life in Australia, but also a reminder that Australia does not necessarily welcome all refugees with open arms, at times treating refugees little better than did the regimes they risked their lives to escape. Najeeba Wazefadost brings home just how inhumane our detention policy can be in