BOOKS

I first read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale about ten years ago and recently reread it, followed by the long-awaited sequel The Testaments. Atwood's dystopian classic, first published in 1985, depicts the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and patriarchal state created after the United States falls sometime in the twenty-first century. It is told through the eyes of Offred, a handmaid who is forced to bear children for Commander Waterford and his wife Serena Joy. Because of the recent television series, which is a very faithful adaptation of the novel, 'The Handmaid's Tale' was fresher in my mind as a reread. I admire Atwood's ability to create detailed worlds in relatively sparse prose. Despite the fact that there isn't much description of Offred's surroundings or much explanation about the creation of Gilead at first, Atwood paints a vibrant and shocking portrait of this dystopian world, gradually building towards a dramatic conclusion. XEM ...

‘Alias Grace’ by Margaret Atwood is based on the true story of Grace Marks, a servant convicted of the notorious double murder of her employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper and mistress Nancy Montgomery alongside stable hand James McDermott in Toronto in 1843 when she was just sixteen years old. McDermott was hanged for attempting to flee from Canada to the United States, while Grace was sentenced to life in prison at Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario after her death sentence was commuted at the last minute. Despite admitting to the crime at the time, Grace claims she has no recollection of the murders fifteen years later. Dr. Simon Jordan, an American psychiatrist, is investigating her sanity at the request of a liberal minister who believes she is innocent. Atwood's historical fiction output is limited in comparison to her dystopian novels, but she faithfully recreates the complex structure and slow denouement of gothic novels of the era, with a style that is neither ove...

The MaddAddam trilogy concludes with the bioengineered Crakers from Oryx and Crake and the eco-religious cult known as God's Gardeners from The Year of the Flood. After the human race has been almost entirely wiped out by a man-made plague, Toby takes center stage once more, leading the small community of survivors besides the Zeb, a mysterious minor character from 'The Year of the Flood. ' The third installments of trilogies typically culminate with a lengthy epic battle, but an author as innovative as Atwood does not provide her readers with anything as predictable as this. Rather than building up tension for a big showdown, 'MaddAddam' is a much more subdued book than I expected, owing to the fact that much of the book is devoted to filling in the characters' backstories, recapping events that have already occurred from alternate perspectives. As a result, there is significantly less plot momentum than in previous volumes. Although we learn more about Zeb and...

I really enjoyed  Oryx and Crake  by Margaret Atwood a couple of years ago and have finally got round to reading the second book in her acclaimed MaddAddam trilogy ‘The Year of the Flood’. Set in the same universe as ‘Oryx and Crake’, ‘The Year of the Flood’ follows a lower class eco-religious cult known as the God’s Gardeners and their alternative perspective of the same apocalypse .  Only two women from the community, Toby and Ren, survive the Waterless Flood, which was predicted years before by the Gardeners. Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction isn't usually my cup of tea, but it feels more timely than ever right now. Looking past the strange names for characters, places, and objects in this speculative universe reveals a numerous of intriguing parallels with the world as it is today or as it may become in the future. Atwood has previously stated that any aspect of the MaddAddam trilogy's setting has the potential to become a reality depending on how current te...

I thought it was high time I read more of Margaret Atwood's work after reading and enjoying 'The Handmaid's Tale,' 'The Blind Assassin,' and 'Cat's Eye' before starting this blog. 'Oryx and Crake' is the first novel in Margaret Atwood's critically acclaimed MaddAddam trilogy, and it tells the story of Snowman, also known as Jimmy, who is thought to be the only human survivor in a post-apocalyptic world, along with genetically modified creatures known as Crakers. As Snowman returns to the site of the destruction that nearly wiped out the human population, we learn about how the world came to be nearly destroyed and what happened to his friend Crake and the mysterious Oryx through flashbacks. 'Oryx and Crake,' according to Atwood, is a work of fiction rather than science fiction: "Like The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake... contains no intergalactic space travel, teleportation, or Martians." It, like The Handmaid's...

'Transcription,' Kate Atkinson's latest stand-alone novel, follows eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong, who is recruited straight out of school by MI5 in 1940, not long after her mother dies. Initially assigned secretarial duties as well as roles traditionally assigned to women, such as making tea, she soon begins transcription work monitoring conversations held in a Pimlico flat between Fascist sympathisers and an undercover British agent named Godfrey Toby, who poses as a member of the Gestapo. A decade later, she is working as a BBC radio producer of children's program, believing that her wartime activities have passed her by. A chance meeting with Godfrey, some threatening notes, and a sense that she is being followed remind her that the world of espionage is not one easily left behind, and there are those who want Juliet to know that her actions have far-reaching consequences.   The story begins in 1981, when Juliet is hit by a car in London, and jumps back and fort...