US EditionMargaret Atwood reflects on literature, feminism and luck
Margaret Atwood reflects on mortality, feminism, and her writing journey in her 600-page memoir, highlighting her lucky generation and the inspirations behind her work.
- During a recent New York interview, Margaret Atwood discussed her memoir Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, in an edited conversation.
- Mortality and the losses of close contemporaries prompted her to write the memoir, and she said she would not have published it if Graeme Gibson, late author-adventurer and longtime companion, were still alive.
- The memoir traces how she writes, linking The Handmaid's Tale, Alias Grace, and The Robber Bride to inspirations, and recounts being tricked by girls who buried her in snow at 9, shaping Cat's Eye.
- While often labeled a feminist for The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood cautions there are at least 75 kinds of feminism and views dystopian fiction as warnings, not blueprints.
- At 85, Margaret Atwood reflects on luck and her World War II generation's stability, calling herself `lucky` and acknowledging her prize-winning status tied to The Handmaid's Tale.
12 Articles
12 Articles
Margaret Atwood is nobody’s handmaid
“When I was writing this memoir and my early readers were reading it,” Margaret Atwood says about two-thirds of the way into Book of Lives, “one of them kept asking: ‘But how famous were you then?’ ‘And what about then?’” The finished version brooks no such uncertainty. In 1976, with three novels and nine poetry collections to her name, Atwood was “a little famous”. Nine years later, after the publication of The Handmaid’s Tale – her bestselling…
Margaret Atwood’s lives in memoir
Anyone who lives a long life runs through a variety of identities. In this memoir of her sixty-five years as a writer, Margaret Atwood describes a selection of “renditions of me”. The scrapbook-like form intersperses short scenes with photographs, poems, floorplans of houses where she has lived, samples of her artwork and mock advice columns that provide ironic summaries of her personal crises. The predominant voice, in Book of Lives, is a nearl…
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