A Story about Story - Rated 
Now on to much weightier matters. Winterson takes a much different approach than Atwood. She tells this tale as herself telling her tale retelling a tale. Confusing? No not really. She begins with herself, tells the story of Heracles ad Atlas and then returns to her own life and lessons learnt.
Unlike the Penelopiad, this book Weight is very dark and brooding and leaves one with a feeling of unease as if we missed something, or even that in reading this book, like Pandora, we have opened a box and cannot now close it and will be forever different. Though we are not sure how.
How does Winterson accomplish this? In this deep brooding book she touches something primal inside. Much as Heracles is awoken and bothered by the question "Why? Why? Why?" this question arises and will not let him go.
So too, this book will awaken questions in your mind and your spirit, and maybe, just maybe, if we are lucky, in this book we will find the questions to lift our weight. If we can learn from it to tell our story we can be freed, and step out from under the burden on our shoulders, as Atlas so desperately desired.
(First published in Imprint 2005-11-05 as `Myth Novels')
Winterson takes on Atlas - Rated 
I enjoyed this reworking of the myth of Atlas by Jeanette Winterson, written for the Canongate Myths series. It is typically Wintersonian (!), in that she dispenses with straightforward narrative, interjects her own personality into the text all over the place, and still manages to deal with the themes that obsess her the most, i.e. the loneliness of being an outsider but having to interact with humanity and the pains and complexities of a less than orthodox love life. If you like Winterson, you should love this. If not, you may find its tendency to get a little didactic in places rather overwhelming. To my mind she always saves herself through the lyrical and poetic nature of her writing and the ability to poke sly fun at herself when she gets too 'weighty'. It reminded me in a lot of ways of some of her earlier work, with some of the sly humour of Boating for Beginners, and the aching sense of loneliness she captures so well with Oranges are Not The Only Fruit.
Empathetic and enjoyable - Rated
I have to disagree with the previous reviewer and say that I found this slim book more enjoyable than Atwood's (although I will not say it's 'better'). Winterson is really good at getting inside the characters' heads and making us understand how they see the world: this applies not only to Atlas, but to Heracles and the gods, as well. The short interludes make this the perfect book to read on the Underground or other public transport.
You don't need to know the original myth, although it helps in order to understand the various references that Winterson throws out within the text. She approaches the story in a quirky, irreverent manner but she is never flippant. I particularly liked the idea of Atlas meeting and taking care of Laika, it made for an original ending.
A strange mixture - Rated 
This is a volume in Canongate's series of myths retold, in this case the one of Atlas and Hercules - with a section towards the end about what happened to Hercules after the episode with Atlas. It is preceded by what I think is a rather pretentious Introduction, in which the author flags up that we are not in for what she calls `plodding fiction', and it does turn out to be a strange mixture of a book.
Some parts of it are very good: Winterson conveys what it must feel like to be poor Atlas, condemned for eternity to bear the weight of the cosmos on his shoulders, his brief release as Hercules temporarily took over the burden, and then being tricked to resume it. She is also effective in the way she represents Hercules, as a coarse creature who loves violent action but whose brain hurts when anything like reflection occurs to him. Other parts of the book are less successful, in my view. At times there is a rather mechanical retelling of the myth, as, for example, when Hercules tells Atlas of his birth and enumerates all the labours he has performed - rather as a character in a badly written play conveys information to the audience in an opening scene. Then there are Jeanette Winterson's `poetic' but imprecise ruminations about Fate and Freedom, bringing in small fragments of her own personal life. She refers frequently to `Boundaries' and `Desires', concepts that are obviously very significant for her but whose meaning in this context rather escapes me (doubtlessly my fault: it is probably too `plodding' of me to look the kind of lucidity I found in Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad in this same series - see my review). Other parts show Winterson's fascination with the characteristics of planets in the solar system and with 20th century space exploration: rather whimsically (mythically?) there is towards the end an encounter between Atlas and Laika, the dog in Sputnik.
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