Margaret Atwood dishes on 'The Handmaid's Tale' and other novels in witty memoir

Margaret Atwood is an indefatigable clip traveler. The prolific Canadian author, possibly champion known for “The Handmaid’s Tale” and its phenomenally palmy Hulu bid adaptation, has written 17 novels, 11 nonfiction titles, 9 abbreviated fabrication collections, 17 volumes of poetry, respective graphic novels and children’s books; she won Booker prizes for “Blind Assassin” and “The Testaments.” In short, she has had galore lives — nationalist and backstage — and displays them all, her ain and others, successful the hefty 624-page circuit de unit “Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts,” recounting the challenging symbiotic narration betwixt beingness and art.

In her light-spirited introduction, Atwood notes however a “sinister change ego” nudged her to “spill immoderate beans … crockery immoderate tea” and to “thank my benefactors, reward my friends, trash my enemies” successful bid to spell beyond what she presumption a “witchy reputation.” It besides establishes the superior thematic premise of however clip serves the dual personalities of a existent and a penning life.

At astir publication signings, idiosyncratic inevitably asks her, “Where bash you get your ideas oregon material?” Atwood posits that “every question-and-answer session” is an illusion wherever determination are “at slightest 2 beings: the 1 who lives, and the 1 who writes.” The 1 doing the living, not the 1 doing the writing, is contiguous connected specified occasions wherever “no penning is being done astatine that moment,” she notes. Rather, similar “Jekyll and Hyde, the 2 stock a representation and adjacent a wardrobe.” They besides stock different constraints.

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Atwood asserts, “I determination done time, and, erstwhile I write, clip moves done me. It’s the aforesaid for everyone. You can’t halt time, nor tin you prehend it; it slips distant similar the Liffey successful Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake.’ Memories tin beryllium vivid though unreliable, diaries tin distort. Nevertheless, each beingness has its ain peculiar flavours and textures, and I volition effort to evoke those of mine.”

For Atwood, existent clip begins with her commencement successful Ottawa General Hospital connected Nov. 18, 1939. She has a keen recreational involvement successful astrology, palmistry, and different occult and paranormal subjects that sometimes participate her writing, and her natal illustration — determined, of course, by clip and abstraction — suggests that she could beryllium an implacable enemy, Atwood notes. She would besides marque a “good detective, spy, and transgression mastermind. And undertaker.” Or, arsenic she writes later, blend investigative skills with con artistry (with “at slightest 2 stories being told astatine once”) to go a novelist.

The writer was calved into a accepted atomic family: begetter Carl was an entomologist and parent Margaret a dietitian/nutritionist; her member Harold preceded her, and sister Ruth arrived a twelve years later. Her father’s probe led to an unconventional nomadic puerility (winters successful Ottawa; summers camping successful Canada’s wilderness, lumber towns, Shield country), which generated an involvement successful subject (“Every clip you look astatine a portion of a rock, you’re looking astatine a clip machine. Everyone’s beingness is shaped by geology.”) She recalls searching for insects, collecting snakes, “manufacturing poison,” surviving successful a compartment successful the bush with nary electricity, water, oregon telephone, gathering a “board and batten” house. It was a beingness that encouraged resourcefulness and resiliency.

The way to work started astir property 6. Inspired by a Little Golden Book titled “The Lively Little Rabbit,” she began to write. Her archetypal self-described opus was a postulation of poems, “Rhyming Cats,” earlier she moved connected to a morality puppet play featuring a shade and an “expose of mendacious narratives.” It’s not astonishing past that her archetypal published publication was a postulation of poems, “The Circle Game,” which won her Canada’s 1966 Governor General’s award.

In the memoir, Atwood describes the inception of her novels. Her debut novel, “The Edible Woman” (1969), drew its mounting from an abandoned clay pit and a broadside involvement successful barroom decorating, for example, portion “Alias Grace” (1996) began with a fewer words connected stationery successful a Zurich hotel. She often moves her archetypal opening scenes elsewhere arsenic her novels instrumentality shape. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” her prescient caller of totalitarian dictatorship, began with the radical hanging scene, which was shifted to the backmost of the book. All the Aunts successful the novel, written successful Berlin successful 1984, were “named aft products aimed astatine women.”

It’s virtually intolerable — adjacent successful a lengthy long-form reappraisal — to screen each the worldly successful Atwood’s beingness and books. But 1 sanction that indispensable beryllium included from her existent beingness is Graeme Gibson. An irascible Canadian writer, helium was her beingness spouse aft her 1973 divorcement from Jim Polk until helium died successful London successful 2019. Gibson dominates her beingness — and overmuch of the memoir. She dedicates the publication to him. Grief haunts her, invades the abbreviated stories successful “Old Babes successful the Woods” (2023) portion “no communicative oregon caller could ever incorporate the full complexity of different quality being.”

Neither tin astir memoirs, but, astatine 85 years, Atwood’s valediction to readers shares “many unusual happenings, incidents of malice, unusual dreams, conversations, joyful moments, ghosts, anserine mistakes, and catastrophes.” She sprinkles “Life Lessons” throughout: “During nationalist appearances, immoderate humiliation tin beryllium flooded unless you propulsion up oregon die”; “You tin marque thing talk, including your sleeve and the brackish and capsicum shakers. Novelists bash it each the time”; “There are immoderate things you can’t fix”; “Governments, specified arsenic Communist ones, that assertion to beryllium ‘helping the people’ tin bash unspeakable things … So could your ain government. Nobody is immune”; “If you’ve got a megaphone, bent connected to it.”

“Book of Lives” mightiness arsenic good beryllium 1 of Atwood’s novels (with the summation of photos and illustrations). It’s a singular read. She makes abstraction for everyone. Her engaging dependable is populated by a ample formed of beguiling characters, settings are enriched with vivid details, each of it grounded by a compelling communicative line. It contains multitudes, conflates beingness and art, and, evoking Jim Croce, successfully puts clip successful a bottle.

Papinchak, a erstwhile English professor, is an award-winning freelance professional successful the Los Angeles area.