Weight, Jeanette Winterson.  Part of a series of novellas commissioned to retell famous myths by well-regarded literary authors, Winterson's Weight takes on the story of Atlas. Like the others in the range, this is brief, and easily finished in one sitting. Like most of Winterson's other work, it also handles the notion of time and memory, in at least a semi-autobiographical manner.

The actual retelling of the Atlas myth encompasses the first third of the book - a breezy colloquial narrative where gods are ordinary blokes and things run according to Edith Hamilton. Winterson interrupts this with short digressions about herself and her own tendency as a writer to carry too much because of her childhood and other limiting factors. All told, it's a whimsical little volume, made more so by the later speculative interactions between Atlas and the first dog in space; the weight of the world, as weighty a topic as it may be is, in the end, an unnecessary burden. A must for fans of Winterson, this should also appeal to those who enjoy reworkings of old tropes.