Sitting in the audience and listening to a tale

The Penelopiad tells the story of Penelope and her twelve maids...though the two tell very different versions of the tale. The book is set up almost like a play. Penelope is talking directly to the reader and telling them about her life and letting her voice be heard. The story also takes place in the modern day in a way, because Penelope is a ghost talking to the reader and she talks of all the ways the world has changed since her death. The reader also learns that the spirits can chose to be reborn and live another life, which Helen and Odysseus do quite often. It's not the main point of the story but it's just some cool world building Atwood gives us. While Penelope tells the reader her side, once in a while the spotlight moves across the stage to the twelve maids that were killed to let them speak. Their sections are the best part of the book honestly. Each time the maids make a visit to the reader their style changes. Sometimes they are doing an old-fashioned Greek chorus, sometimes they perform little plays or songs, sometimes they are giving a lecture to a group of men, or even a retelling of a court hearing. Judge Judy style. It is almost like they wait for Penelope to glance away from the reader before they come running up and saying, "But here's what really happened!" Penelope does try and say she would have stopped the maids' deaths if she had been able to, she says she mourned them greatly, but the maids do not seem to buy into that. Penelope asked them to spy on the suitors for her, and they did it so well that Odysseus and his son thought they were in cahoots with the suitors so they were hung. The book ends with their voices, not Penelope's, because they want the reader to hear them and Atwood allows them to get the last word in.