Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

"A book about war that, like The Naked and the Dead or Catch-22 , manages to be about very much more" (Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening ).Odysseus is returning to Ithaca after nearly twenty years--half of it spent as a soldier and the other half as a soldier of fortune. During his absence, his wife, Penelope, has remained faithful, despite Odysseus being missing and presumed dead. But when her husband suddenly reappears, he confronts those who have been trying to seduce his wife and kills them all.Based on Homer's ancient epics, this is a novel about war and peace--and about how returning soldiers can find peace more horrible than war and home more hellish than the battlefield."The narrative of the novel drives along fast, and Odysseus's adventures on his long journey home are vividly presented. Readers already familiar with them are unlikely to be disappointed; many who come to them fresh will be enthralled." -- The Scotsman"Startlingly original." -- The Times

Genres: Historical Fiction, Greece, Mythology

509 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 24, 2015

About the author

Christopher Rush is a Scottish writer, for thirty years a teacher of literature in Edinburgh. His books include A Twelvemonth and a Day (1985) (chosen by The List magazine in 2005 as one of the 100 best Scottish books of all time) and the highly acclaimed To Travel Hopefully (2005).

Reviews

[Angie Rhodes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave up! I don't want to read about rape, which was constant, in this, far too much swearing too, The idea was a good one, mixing Odysseus's account of the Trojan War and Penelope's made up account. I just couldn't finish it,,

[Anita George · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a Classicist and huge fan of Homer and Greek Mythology, I expected to like this. Instead, I was deeply offended by this misappropriation of Homer and Greek culture. Rush manages to omit all of the nobility in Homer, reducing the characters to foul-mouthed, self-interested misogynists. Ancient Greek culture was misogynist, but Rush has made them far more so. In his book, women are responsible for every misdeed you can think of--even Homer's view of the world is blamed as inaccurate and attributed to Penelope. Given Homer's well-deserved reputation for realism in warfare and a true understanding of what it means to be a warrior, this is an insult. In the end, I tossed this aside: Rush knows next to nothing about Greek culture, warfare, women, or creating believable characters (they all speak in the same foul-mouthed voice--even the aristocratic women and gods).

[The Idle Woman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was drawn towards this book in the library by a kind of magnetic field, as usually happens with books about Troy. I’d never heard of Christopher Rush before, but I was tempted by the sound of a novel that retold the story of the Odyssey and Iliad from different perspectives, focusing on the way that stories ennoble and refine the hard, unpalatable facts of real life. The concept is intelligent, but the language is occasionally unremittingly filthy and the attitude to women is (perhaps unsurprisingly for soldiers in Bronze Age Greece) dismally misogynistic. While I don’t for a minute suggest that the author shares the views of his characters, I found it very hard to warm to a book in which women are seen as having only one function...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2017/04/02/p...

[Deborah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too many swear words and weird sexual activity for my liking so unfinished. The storyline apart from this seemed interesting. Others may enjoy it but it was very much not my type of thing. Sad.

[Inactive]

A really quite astonishing book, it is a warts and all portrait of Odysseus, a soldier gripped with PTSD and an inability to keep it in his pants. Really, a breathtaking book, full to bursting with gems of wisdom, written in a beautiful, dare I say it, poetic way. I would really, really recommend this to any fans of Homer, and anyone else for that matter. This book both challenges and praises the original text, as well as giving sincere and clever insights into the characters. This is a really magnificent book. A masterpiece.



Some more of my favourite quotes...


'I know my fate' said Achilles 'I have known it of old. But before I meet it, I intend to kill Hector, the murderer of my friend. And I will make all of Troy finally sick of blood'

War has no audience, other than the uncaring air, the vacuous clouds.

War is part of the eternal scene, like poverty or plague. Nobody wants war, but nobody, it seems, can do without it.

That, you could say, was the real thrill - returning to the world of hard work and sore rest and meat and drink, with the fire blazing and the wild weather rattling the roof.

I wept then because I wanted to return to real life - sweet simply because it ends, because it's fragile, precarious, unpredictable. And I yearned again for the trials and wanderings renewed time and again, the earth flinty beneath my feet and the slow ocean rolling underneath me as it has rolled under others for centuries, millennia, rolling me on to the next experience.

Who was I? What was I? Beggar, wanderer, outcast, lover, warrior, god.


There's no identity without pain, and it's pain that helps you in the end to snatch what you can from the dark. Otherwise you're a dead man.

The sea. I'm starting to catch it now, the smell of it, the pull of it. The sea, the sea. That feeling you get when you walk through cities, settlements and you're impatient to leave, can't wait to see the back of them. You come to farmsteads, villages, you cross fields. Your pace quickens. The last scattered houses fall behind you and you're almost running now, hurrying over scrubland, still lugging your life along with you, the big burden, hungry to purge yourself of it, to unclog your soul. Suddenly a surge of gulls, the sting of salt, and the roar in your ears - and you're really running now, stumbling over tussock and boulder and beach-grass until you arrive at the sea's seaweedy edge and see it spread out before you like unchartered existence, unfenced emptiness, and you understand what you're smelling now, it's the scent of adventure, the old aroma of the unknown, the unexperienced, the outermost edge of the landsman's life, and you lose your loamy gravity and grow light, shedding the past as a swimmer peels off his clothes, and out you go...

[Elite Group · Rating 3 out of 5]

GOOD AND BAD RE-IMAGINING OF THE HOMERIC WORLD - 3 STARS

Odysseus returns to Ithaca after nearly twenty years and, during his absence, his wife Penelope remains faithful, despite Odysseus being missing and presumed dead. But, when her husband suddenly reappears, he confronts those who have been trying to seduce his wife and kills them all. This is a novel about war and peace, about how returning soldiers can find peace more horrible than war, and home more hellish than the battlefield.


The author's version of Homer is one for our own times when heroism and relish in battle are both unfashionable. This is unlike many other novels from this time where living and dying in battle is seen as being magnificent and full of honour. Rush chooses to present events through the eyes of Odysseus and Penelope and it is interesting to compare their views and observations. However, I thought that the book was skewed too far towards Odysseus's coarse telling of his story and I would have liked to read more about Penelope's life. The book certainly moves at a good pace and Odysseus' adventures as he returns home are very well depicted.


The author explains Odysseus's dilemma thoughtfully - part of him is happy to be coming home to his wife but the other part of him is content when he is blown off course and thus has to continue his adventures. It is a very clever idea with the main premise being an analysis of the effects of war on soldiers and portraying the legends of the Trojan wars with similarities to more recent military campaigns. It is an epic story of over 500 pages and deals with four huge concepts, namely war, peace, love and revenge.


The book lost at least a star, maybe two, because of the plethora of pretty disgusting four letter words liberally sprinkled throughout the entire novel. There is, quite frankly, no need for it and I am sure that any female reading the book will be disgusted by the numerous and different swear words used to describe the women in the story. Christopher Rush is a poet and literary critic and it is very disappointing that virtually every male soldier in the story is universally sexist.


In summary, this is an imaginative but flawed re-work of the Homeric world which left me feeling that I had read a good book but that it could have been so much better, especially without all the foul-mouthed passages throughout.

Digger95

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

[S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't normally condone the recycling of books, but for Penelope's Web I can make an exception.

This review is marked as a spoiler because, as well as giving out some spoilers, I have quoted some parts of the book that address sensitive topics in a very insensitive way.Please take care!


Despite the rant that will soon follow, the idea of this book was actually very interesting. Here, rather than retelling the myth directly, Odysseus' story is presented in three ways. The first is the perspective of Odysseus himself (a battle-worn veteran) who gives a brutal retelling of the Trojan war and his return home. Second is the perspective of Penelope, who spins Odysseus's account into something mythical and worthy of heroes, adding in gods, making Odysseus appear far more glorious than his own account does, and bringing his story into the Homeric version which we all know. Then, finally, there is the perspective of the 'distanced narrator'. This perspective covered all the elements that Odysseus couldn't have seen for himself.

HOWEVER, in reality these perspectives were really not it. The narrator's segments feel like nothing more than your normal translation of the OG texts (which are better to read imo). Penelope's parts (likely the best bits) were better written and less problematic than Odysseus's but really didn't add to Odysseus's overall development or story, other than to highlight that the stories/myths were lies. Odysseus's perspective was quite frankly disturbing at points, was far to rough in some areas, and read like a 14 year old on Wattpad who had just discovered the words f*ck and c*nt.

My biggest grievances with this book unsurprisingly come from the Odysseus segments which, to be honestly, were so outright disgusting at points that I wasn't brave enough to read this book in public (and I've read dark fantasy romances in public before). I'm too tired and angry with this book to type out full blown paragraphs on the issues, so I will drop some quotes and points below. Mostly all of these quotes do concern sensitive subjects, such as sexual assault, because this book felt SO OFF the mark when it came to the sexualisation and the treatment of women.

Before anyone delights in telling me that 'in the ancient world things were just like that!' I do have 2 Classics degrees, so I am well aware that the ancient world was a rough & brutal place where women were not treated especially well or as equals to men. Ancient perspectives on treatments of the body were obviously not the same as ours. But there is no accusing the way that women were treated in this book, which adds in its own original scenes to further aid its degrading of women.

I will also highlight that this book claims to give a 'modern-day Odysseus' (inside the hardback cover), so to claim that these elements are making it more like the ancient world does not save this book. If we can have Odysseus say 'zero-dark thirty' and various modern abbreviation, we can have a respect for women in a modern sense too. This book was written in 2015, not the 1800s.

Quotes & Points: (I will try to sensor quotes as I'm not sure how Goodreads will respond to them being typed out as they are in the book.)

The opening line of this book: "When I got back to Ithaca ... you might think I'd have done what every soldier supposedly does after a long campaign and a hard homecoming - get stuck straight between my wife's ..... and smash p*ssers with her. before the nightmares start up and the blackheads surround me for the hundredth f*cking time."

Charming opening, isn't it? Then not long after we get "nothing much the matter with r*ape, as a weapon." PARDON ME? Since when was this acceptable to write, even in a work of fiction? And this is all in the books opening. Really made me want to keep reading about this version of Odysseus.

Here's the description we get of Paris on his way to Sparta to catch Helen: "He boarded his trim ship, newly fitted out, and homed in on Helen, scenting Spartan f*nny all across the Aegean." And this version of Paris not only has the nose of every Fae love interest in contemporary romantasy books, BUT he also went down on Aphrodite herself during his judgement of which of the goddesses should get the Golden Apple. Aphrodite just ripped off her clothes and told him to get to it in front of Athena and Hera. This was SUCH an important original element to add to the story!

But don't worry. If Paris and Odysseus are insufferable, at least there's Hector, who normally comes out as the best hero in every retelling. HA! In this version, even Hector makes you want to scream in rage as he tells his beloved wife "not to be a sniveling b*tch" during that touching scene where she asks him to be safe and he interacts with his son.

Patroclus also rips out and eats Kebriones' heart. I suppose we really feel sorry about his death in this version.

To make it clear that women really are just there to be tools for sexual acts, not only are we told that they're just vessels for men's seed, but we also get a lovely scene (that is attributed to Penelope) where Helen strokes and licks an extra appendage which is given to the Trojan Horse. That's right. The WOODEN HORSE. "Grasping the great ph*ll*s that Penelope put on it for the purpose." There's more to this but I'm not typing it out. I've read books with tentacle sex and this takes the cake as absolutely vulgar. It's something I would expect to see on Wattpad.

When Troy is taken, we of course get another reminder that "all is fair in love and war, and r*pe is always there, the eternal weapon ... all is excused." PARDON? This. Is. Not. Acceptable. This is seriously disturbing and dangerous. Along with this later line that we get concerning Circe (who in this version is prompted into sex by Odysseus, because we can't possibly have the woman as the dominant one) "this wasn't r*pe. I wanted her, all of her, to the core, to the soul." These comments are so unhealthy and concerning, absolutely disgusting.

And women are useless, because "women and nations - they both need a leader." A female leader, I should think, considering the state of men in this book.

Clytemnestra also gives Agamemnon some favors when he comes home, because you obviously can't just murder your husband in revenge for him murdering your daughter without getting your hands on him first.

There is a threesome right in the middle of the hall with the suitors, because of course there is!



To conclude, this was beyond a terrible book. If you want a gritty retelling of the Trojan war, spare yourself, your brain cells, your rage, and read The Silence of the Girls. If you want a feminist retelling, avoid this book at all costs. If you want a book that respects women, avoid this book at all costs. If you want a book that doesn't read like its from Wattpad, avoid this book at all costs.

Or maybe, if you just want a book, avoid this book at all costs.

[Robert Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to chuckle a bit reading the negative reviews from those who don't like a lot of swearing and violence. Nope, this is not the book for you if you prefer not to be subject to that - the violence and profanity are pretty relentless. It's a strange kind of beast this novel - I am not quite sure what Rush was trying to achieve by presenting the various Odysseus myths in this more modern, soldier-style vernacular. I was a little bit confused, as sometimes the styles bled into each of the different narrative strands e.g. some of Penelope's sections contained the profanity, sometimes there were the magical/fantasy elements in Odysseus' account (there was no alternative given to the sirens as some kind of magical beings, for instance, whereas the Cyclops was presented as just being a big, mean, savage Greek who had lost one eye).
Hey, I enjoyed it overall, but probably more because I love the Odysseus stories and was happy to re-experience them in a new way.

[Ruth Harwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story of the Iliad and the Oddessey in one book? Oh yes please!
Plenty of language I don't think Homer included in either epic (or the storytellers before him, tbh), but that makes this more relatable and gritty and real, in my opinion! I did get emotional when Odyseus met Calypso in her cave (my cat died on 3rd Aug mysteriously after 48 hr sickness - her name was Calypso, she was black with bit of white, and a demanding, my mum not yours sister - Cinnamon being her sister - kinda cat, and it made me realise I'd either named her aptly, or she'd grown into the goddess' name!).
I know anyone who enjoys a good war yarn, or history, or even fantasy... tbh, Homer is a little chunky and poetic for readers nowadays, but this gives you the story, as do many others, and who needs the original when there are rewrites like this? Well, the original can't be beaten, but that was written centuries after the story began to circulate, and therefore the whole trojan war and the wheres and whys and thus are hidden in the mists of time! It's a bit like Mallory - poetic licence is allowed when the original was written so far after events that the verbal tellings will have changed beyond recognition.
I loved this version, it's real and gritty and full of real people and emotions and does point out that with an average life span of about 30 years, how could heroes be fighting for ten, then take another ten to get home - it's one of those suspend your belief events - and the war likely was shorter and the times grew in the telling! Do try this for yourself, even if you know the story, this will give you something to enjoy x