Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Myths, The) (Hardcover)

by Jeanette Winterson (Author)
Key Phrases: Mother Earth

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Inspired by a Titan, she begins appropriately on a titanic scale, writing about the heavens and the earth, and astronomy and geology, and bringing her musings home to the human scale." Sunday Times "[Winterson] produces some exquisitely filmic prose that is almost mythopoetic." Independent "An original and challenging approach... profound and provocative." Daily Mail "A touching meditation on the difficult journey to self-knowledge, and also extremely funny, communicating verve and wit." Guardian" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review
“One of the most worthwhile and singular reads of 2005. Jeanette Winterson creates an uncategorisable, meditative and moving book.”
–David Mitchell, Sunday Herald (Glasgow)


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Canongate U.S. (October 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841957186
• ISBN-13: 978-1841957180
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #539,315 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What to do when the Matterhorn is digging into your shoulder..., December 13, 2005

By	Kristin Tomic (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Winterson's work is always beguiling, and here she proves that often, less is more, especially with a story that she emphasizes again and again has been told before. She wants to tell the story again, and this might be the best retelling of them all.

Atlas, a titan among the Titans, has been sentenced to hold the weight of the world on his immensely strong shoulders for pretty much the whole of time. (Time being relative and unimportant in the long view, we might as well say he must carry the world for all eternity.) He spends his time reflecting on past loves, past mistakes, and, of course, the weight. One day, though, a reprieve comes in an unlikely form: Herakles.

Winterson's Herakles is as un-Kevin Sorboish as one can imagine. He's a drunken, oversexed oaf with an Oedipal fixation on his beautiful stepmother, Hera. (He is also by far the funniest and most lively character in this novella.) He's getting close to the end of his Twelve famous Labors, and he needs Atlas's help. In return, Herakles will hold up the world for just one day.

You probably know how the myth ends. After all, we don't talk about how Herakles shoulders the weight of all Creation, now do we? But then what happened, when Atlas took up his burden again?

Winterson does bring the story into the 20th century, although this is not precisely a "modern retelling" as the jacket description would have you believe. She brings an intriguing twist into the story that, as a devoted dog-person, had me smiling for about a week.

For any fan of Jeanette Winterson, classical lit, history, dog-lovers, and sufferers of Atlas-complexes, this book is a must-have.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep questions pondered, December 19, 2005

By	Steven R. McEvoy "MCWPP" (Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Your Upstanding, Altruistic Heracles Here, September 16, 2006

By	Amy Graham (Scottsdale, AZ) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I positively LOVED this book. It's the first I read in Canongate's Myth series, and I'm glad I started with this one! I read Weight in a couple of hours, but then it's not all that long (coming in at 151 pages), but in those pages it was fun, outrageous, sad, and well, different! I particularly loved her un-Sorbo like Heracles...he's coarse, vulgar, oversexed...and oh so unlike the Hercules played by Sorbo - and this is a good thing in my book! For Atlas' part, the long suffering god, made to bear the weight of the world upon his shoulders, is relieved of the burden for a short time, but even then he is tricked too early to returning to it...even in this we are given a twist, following Atlas from ancient Greece into the modern space race...I really enjoyed this twist. Weight is kind of a story inside of a story, with side stories even, and I like that about this book, it give one a lot to think about and a whole new twist on these mythic figures.

I've not read any of Winterson's other work (which I may have to try out based on this reading), so I can't compare this to her other work, nor can I compare it to Atwood's Penelopaid (which I have in my library TBR pile...but this one is due in two days and cannot be renewed, so I had to read it NOW)...which is also in the Canongate's series of myths retold... even so, I give Weight a A, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it for a quick, fun retelling of the Atlas/Heracles myth.