Atwood brings characters to life
By Andrew Robinson
Staff Reporter_ __
“Bluebeard’s Egg and Other
Stories,’’ Margaret Atwood
(Fawcett Books)
For those of you out there who
don't know (and there are far loo
many who don't), this is Women's
Week, a week or so set aside to
heighten awareness and celebrate
what it means to be a woman. I am not
a woman, so I am by necessity
somewhat removed from the center of
the week and its subject.
Margaret Atwood has been called a
feminist author for quite some time,
and with good reason. No, this docs
not mean she is a lesbian or a man
hater (only boorish, paranoid
homophobics generally equate the
two). Without delving into the
current state of chaotic juvenile
attitudes concerning homosexuality, I
want to tell you about Atwood and her
incredible books.
Atwood’s most recent claim to
popular fame, which turned her name
into almost a household word, was
“The Handmaid’s Tale,” which
skyrocketed to the top of the best
seller lists a year or so ago. A novel of
award-winning proportions, “The
Handmaid’s Talc is a strong voice
for the championship of feminism,
portraying a world in the not-so
distant-or-removed future where
patriarchal systems have totally
undermined women’s rights, to the
point of slavery. In her engaging and
often wittily sharp prose, Atwood
points out altitudes in today’s world
which, blown up into the light of the
world of “The Handmaid’s Talc,” we
sec as abominations.
Atwood is a Canadian whose
writing career has included best
selling fiction and award-winning
nonfiction and poetry. She’s had
about 20 books published. Anyone
who writes great fiction and poetry is
OK in my book (she recently
published her second volume of
poems). Her collection of shorter
works, “Bluebeard’s Egg and Other
Stories.,” recently went into
paperback from Fawcett and is
fascinating. I’ve always thought
shorter works were ideal for a college
student’s reading time (pick the book
up fora while and then put itdown for
a longer while), and when this format
is written by a good author, I want to
tell all my friends to grab it.
“Bluebeard’s Egg” gives the
reader a world of wonderfully alive
characters, some women and some
men, who almost jump off the page
with the way Atwood portrays them.
She gives them a human touch that
borders on biography. It is as if these
people were actually living and
breathing, perhaps even as Atwood’s
friends.
This illusion is so real that whether
the characters arc drawn from life or
from imagination fails to matter.
What docs matter is that, to the reader,
they arc alive and their lives call up
things in our mind, questions which
need to be asked about how we love
and live today. What is the
relationship between mother and
See ATWOOD on 11
Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin
Atwood
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