Margaret Atwood's books have been published in over thirty-five countries. She is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid's Tale, her novels include Cat's Eye, short-listed for the Booker Prize Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize and Oryx and Crake. Her previous nonfiction book was Second Words, published in 1984. She lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibsion.
Atwood is, of course, one of the most famous and prolific Canadian novelists of our time (The Blind Assassin, etc.), and this eclectic collection ably testifies to the scope of her interests and passions. These are occasional pieces, and as such, they form a somewhat odd collection, as when a review of Elmore Leonard's novel Tishomingo Blues is immediately followed by an obituary for a fellow Canadian writer and friend. Atwood has thought long and deeply about the role women have played in the past and continue to play today. But while in the earlier essays she writes of a living revolutionary force that she believed would change the world, the more recent work views the feminist movement as a relic of an earlier time, even if its goals are still forefront in her mind. As responses to specific moments in literary, personal or social history, many of these works don't necessarily deserve to be preserved in perpetuity, but they all skillfully characterize their writer as a woman ravenously curious about the world, witty enough to know her own place in it, fiercely dedicated to language and the art and craft of writing and, even when training a skeptical eye on the world around her, enthusiastic as a child about the very act of living. Agent, Phoebe Larmore. (Apr. 19) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
One of Canada's most celebrated writers, Atwood has written nearly 40 works of fiction, poetry, and criticism. In this chronologically arranged collection of 58 short, nonfiction pieces, she comments on world events, fellow writers, and her own development. She reviews books by John Updike, Italo Calvino, Antonia Fraser, and Dashiell Hammett, as well as the lesser-known Robert Bringhurst, Hilary Mantel, and H. Rider Haggard. Her policy of not reviewing books she doesn't like ensures a consistently positive tone; she saves her criticism for the excesses of Canada's southern neighbor, as in her "Letter to America," published in the Nation, which severely takes the United States to task for economic excess, reduced constitutional rights, and Iraq. Atwood includes enough personal pieces to reveal herself as a committed world citizen, widely read and engaged. One poignant piece describes how a visit to Afghanistan just before the Soviet invasion influenced The Handmaid's Tale, especially the idea of women in a theocratic state wearing uniforms with head coverings. This collection will not disappoint Atwood fans as her analyses both challenge and entertain. Recommended for all libraries.-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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