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Canongate Myth Series: The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is one author whose name every Canadian child will hear about growing up; I am no exception. She is frequently touted in schools, dinner parties and every bookshop you walk into will be sure to have her books in prominent view. Probably best known for her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood’s writing has always taken on topics of complexity and import, and The Penelopiad is no different. From the previous Canongate Myth Series novellas, I have read, I had begun to recognise a pattern. They were not, as is their most usual identifiers, simple retellings of Greek…

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Books

Canongate Myth Series: Girl Meets Boy Book Review

Author: Ali Smith                                  Pages: 164                              Publisher: Canongate ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Nobody grows up mythless,’ Robin says. ‘It’s what we do with the myths when we grow up that matters.’ A modern day re-interpretation of the myth of Iphis by Ovid, Girl Meets Boy is Ali Smith’s 2007 contribution to the Canongate Myth Series. Like all in the series, Smith’s addition is relatively short, but packed with intention and triggers for incredible worldly insights. In fact, the length of these novellas is quickly becoming one of my favourite aspect of this series, as it allows me to think more deeply about the…

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Books

Canongate Myth Series Review: Jeanette Winterson’s “Weight”

For the first review in the Canongate Myth Series I chose to pick up Jeanette Winterson’s novella, Weight. Winterson has an interesting reputation as a writer of being completely unpredictable and incredibly insightful, which is a description that perfectly sums up Weight. Weight retells the story of Atlas, who carried the world on his shoulders and Heracles, the half-god hero, from Greek mythology. Already, by choosing to rewrite such popular stories, Winterson was in for a challenge. However, it is not simply the story of Atlas or of Heracles that she writes, but that of herself. Many of her novels…

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Books

Introducing the “Canongate Myth Series” Book Reviews

One of the things I was absolutely obsessed with as a kid was mythology and folklore of any kind. If it had to do with old-time gods and impossibly perfect heroes and heroines, I would be drawn to it. Things like Hercules had be as excited as the muses. So, obviously, the moment I heard about the Canongate Myth Series, I jumped on it. Conceived in 1999, the project aimed to have authors rewrite a myth in a series of short novels. The first books of this series came out in 2005 with Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth,…

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