The Penelopiad (2005)

Penelope has a kingdom to manage, a son to raise and suitors to resist while Odysseus is away. Atwood gives that familiar waiting wife a witty account of her own, then makes the fate of her twelve maids a question that heroic homecoming cannot neatly settle. The Odyssey's outline is useful background. The sharper comparison here concerns class as well as gender: an influential woman's version does not exhaust the lives caught inside the same household.