A possible assignment for C.C.?

So, not that you don't have enough to do or anything, but why don't you read the new Margaret Atwood and let us know what you think about it?

From The Independent:

Spun from low-status material on the margins of classical culture, The Penelopiad creates a form all its own. As she works from the Odyssey and other traditional stories, Atwood resurrects the long-suffering wife of Odysseus - and the 12 young "maids" (that is, slaves) so bafflingly hanged when the hero returned to Ithaca after his long adventures in the wake of the Trojan wars. It sounds, in the abstract, rather like the sort of low-temperature, left-handed exercise with which garlanded authors may sometimes while away the time as a bigger idea comes slowly to the boil. Not with Atwood, who will kill a fledgling work off rather than nurture a misbegotten book.

Not being much of an Atwood fan myself (I don't hate her or anything, I just haven't read much), I'm reserving judgment about this one.  I'm not going to get all excited.  Okay, I have some (really big) doubts about it.  But no one is better qualified to review it than our favorite classics expert. 

Whaddya say?