Pat Barker, _The Silence of the Girls_; Margaret Atwood, _The Penelopiad_

REWORKING HOMERIC MATERIAL with the narrative devices of the modern realist novel (mobile point of view, greater interiority with the characters, more attention to the routines and habits of daily life) has almost become its own sub-genre. I might not have read either of these on my own initiative--both were selections for book clubs I belong to--but both were enjoyable and insightfuil. Both take advantage of Homer's having paid much less attention to the epics' female characters.

Atwood, as the title of her short novel suggests, is interested in what Penelope was up to during Odysseus' protracted absence, and what she made of the mysterious stranger who turned up at the palace one day and eventually revealed himself as Odysseus. Atwood's Penelope (and Homer's I think) spots Odysseus for who he is right away and has her own reasons for withholding recognition. Atwood also invents some good backstory about Penelope's and Odysseus' courtship and early marriage. Atwood's Penelope is also a little catty about Helen, but how could you not be?

The more audacious element of Atwood's novel is her giving voices to the twelve slave women of Odysseus' palace who, as punishment for getting too friendly with the squatting suitors, have to clean up the bloody mess after the massacre of the suitors and then are themselves hung from the rafters. The formal range and the tonal range of these sections are remarkable: some poems, some in dramatic form, with lots of sass, smarts, and reverse-angle revelations.

Barker's narrator is Briseis, the young woman given as a prize to Achilles, then commandeered by Agamemnon when he has to give up his own prize, Chryseis, to avert the plague sent by Apollo, Agamemnon's grab-back initiating Achilles' withdrawal from the war, which creates the plot of the Iliad.

Penelope appears often in the Odyssey, but Barker has decided to work basically from scratch: Briseis has no backstory at all, not even a scrap of dialogue. Barker decides she is of noble blood, with a talent for medicine, strong intelligence, and enough personality to intrigue first Patroclus, Achilles' bosom comrade, and then Achilles himself. Well, why not?

Barker is well-known for her trilogy on the trauma of the soldiers of the First World War, and The Silence of the Girls has a very similar focus on the catastrophic human costs of military glory.

Still, for my money, the best novel in this sub-genre is Mark Merlis's An Arrow's Flight.