The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

70%
20.03.12

I skipped much of this when I read it for the first time, 15 years or so ago. It seemed too dense, too tense, too darn improbable to bother wading through. Reading it now, with a little more life experience, I found the first half of the book raw and painfully gripping, considering that the narrator spends much of her time staring at the wall (or, given the nature of her predicament, the ceiling). Feminist writing is rarely as accomplished as this - other than, of course in Atwood's other novels. And yet... it runs out of steam towards the end, tries to build a weak plot, ends ambiguously and then shoots itself in the head with an ill-advised explanatory epilogue. That's the part I should have skipped this time round.

The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood

58%
11.01.12

I'd forgotten how wise and funny Margaret Atwood can be. This novella reminded me how wise and funny some of her other books are (The Blind Assassin remains one of my favourites). Its mix of quirky humour, learnedness and feminism - usually a winner for me - just didn't hang together. But I might read The Odyssey when I get a moment.

The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood

70%
26.11.02




Worthless men, pathetic women, miserable childhoods, bad parenting, a disgraceful number of typos and slightly improbable characters. Yes, it's a Margaret Atwood novel. It's overwritten, complicated and overlong but somehow it does end up as a rather good novel, a sort of dress rehearsal for the fantastic 'Blind Assassin'.

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

80%
22.12.01



The best book I've read since 'Northern Lights' [Edited: at this point I had not read 'Northern Lights' for a second time]. Complex and engrossing, delicately written and always gracious to the reader. The plot unfolds carefully, so that the denouement doesn't provoke surprise so much as a sigh of satisfaction.