Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts

A charming, lively memoir that refuses to take itself too seriously. Atwood in old age doesn’t want us to force her into the image of the earnest, crusading, feminist, environmentalist, literary campaigner; she would prefer us to think of her as a kind of naughty grandmother, devious, witty and subversive. The text is peppered with mildly embarrassing photos and drawings or comic strips, and there are far more laugh-out-loud scenes than you might expect from the autobiography of Canada’s leading literary figure of the late 20th century.

There probably isn’t much here that will surprise you if you’ve read her novels, but it is still interesting to see how Atwood was influenced by her slightly eccentric childhood — her father show more was an entomologist, so the young family spent the non-winter months of each year in a shack in the woods somewhere a few hours paddling from the nearest civilisation. (I think when I first read her books I still had a vague idea that all Canadians lived like this…). It is also interesting to see her looking back with hindsight at the way Canada in general, and Can-Lit in particular, have emerged from the extremely provincial mood of the forties and fifties to the point where Atwood became someone who could be confused with other literary Margarets. Although she still got the annoying “My wife loves your books” more often than she would have liked.

Fun, but no substitute for (re-)reading the novels! show less

One of several epigraphs opening this memoir by Margaret Atwood is a quote by her friend: "Don't piss her off or you'll live forever." In the introduction that follows, Atwood outlines her past refusals for composing a memoir with the reasons for doing so now. But she leaves one additional reason unspoken, the recent passing of her long-time companion Graeme Gibson. This was her opportunity to make him immortal, too. She provides his full backstory and he is a steady presence through the latter half of her own until his death in 2019.

Margaret Atwood's wisdom and dry humour shine through in this tour of her life, from her birth in 1939 to the present. There's an amazing overlap between her and my knowledge of Ontario communities that I show more never would have imagined. At one time as a child she lived within a few blocks of my father, and they were only six months apart in age. There's a lot to be said for the education she had going all the way back to grade school, with the careful study of poem types and structure (I didn't get any of that in the 1980s). She wasn't inspired to pursue writing as a career until high school, but once on the path it seems she didn't waver from it or ever seriously doubt herself and her ability, and pursued English into post-secondary studies.

It's always interesting to pick up hints from an author's background of what inspired certain works, and Atwood is very generous with highlighting several instances where experience provided her material. In the early going she's open about naming names of the deceased, then draws a veil over the names of those who may be or certainly are still living. More than once she experienced harassment, but she shares those instances with a streak of humour and identifies no one. On the other hand there's a laundry list of people she met before she was famous, though not necessarily before they were. Among the ones I recognized were Dennis Lee, Donald Sutherland, Northrup Frye, Adrienne Clarkson, Michael Ondjaatje, Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, Alice Munro, Jean Rhys, together with a host of others who were or became noteworthy in poetry or publishing. I've read Salman Rushdie's biography and it was fun to see the two intersect.

Maybe what surprised me most was her credulousness about the supernatural, which crops up again and again: astrology, palm reading, ghosts, auras, psychics, fortune telling, exorcists, magic wool - all mentioned as factual things that she has either encountered, practiced or derived helpful information from. It suggests I've not read her novels as closely as I ought, so I'll watch in future for how she treats these things. I've read four or five over the years, and now I'm interested in at least that many more. show less

A Career & CanLit Overview with Humour 🍁
A review of the McClelland & Stewart hardcover (November 5, 2025) released simultaneously with the audiobook/ebook.

You were such a sensitive child!
- My Mother
But I'm quite flinty now.
- Me
Yes. You are.
- My Daughter
One of these days that smart mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble.
- My father, when I was a teenager

I hadn't actually planned on reading this for the 2025 Long Books Challenge with several GR friends, but when I was at the library there it was on the New Releases shelf and I went for it on impulse. I can't even say that I'm a huge Atwood fan, sticking mostly to her breakout hits & and several of the shorter works. After reading Book of Lives I'm definitely ready to tackle show more more though. There is even a nice omnibus edition [book:The Margaret Atwood 4-Book Bundle: The Handmaid's Tale; The Blind Assassin; Alias Grace; The Robber Bride|30286076] available as a bargain eBook if you are looking for a possible starter pack.

Book of Lives tells Atwood's own life story, starting with her younger years with her parents and siblings which was often spent roughing it in Northern Ontario and Quebec where her father worked as an entomologist. That early life prepared her for the later years with life partner Graeme Gibson (1934-2019). whether exploring, farming or viewing bird life in the wilderness. Gibson's own life story is interspersed throughout, including those years before the two ever met.

The main course is the story of Atwood's writing career and development from a poet at a young age to the dominant figure of Canadian literature she is today. The book is full of trivia on the backstories of the novels and many of the short stories. This often entails quirky encounters with other writers and the publishers and editors of her works. The book is enhanced by a generous number of photographs and several of Atwood's own quirky cartoon drawings.

This was overall a Canadian bibliophile's delight with an emphasis on Atwood's self-deprecatory humour and gossipy bits about the history of Canadian literature. One of my top reads of 2025! show less

I was lucky enough to get the download of this audiobook soon after it came out. Margaret Atwood herself is the narrator and I wouldn't have wanted anyone else. Her personality really comes through. Probably a lot of people who have only read her better known fiction would be surprised to learn that she is funny. At times during the reading, she even gives a little chuckle.

I believe Atwood has been pretty candid about her life. She names some names but, if it is in a negative way, that person is probably deceased. The one exception is the Globe and Mail journalist, Margaret Wente, who has frequently criticized Atwood. She goes into considerable detail about both her long term relationships. It is clear that Atwood and Graeme Gibson had show more a very special bond and supported each other in their various endeavours. She certainly lived in a variety of homes with him, many of which seemed to be infested with vermin and needing a lot of repair. It would try the best of relationships to go through that once, let alone multiple times. His death, after suffering from vscular dementia for several years, was accepted by Atwood as a good death. When that loss was followed by the global pandemic, Atwood just soldiered on, writing and participating as much as before, albeit in a different way.

I loved hearing about the inspirations for her novels, some of which percolated for some time before coming to fruition. I think this book is a remarkable view into the thoughts of one of the great writers of our time. Surely it is time she won the Nobel Prize for Literature? show less

I just really enjoyed this book, and audio made it better. I'm not the biggest Atwood reader. I had read three of her novels when I started this, including [The Handmaid's Tale] and its sequel. Based on this book, I've now read her first novel, and I'm listening to her second. I was won over.

I loved Atwood's flat dry-humor tone here. She sounds almost as if we, readers, couldn't possibly care about what she has to say, but we're here so she might as well tell us. And yet, it's terrific stuff. I certainly enjoyed learning about her books, many of which I hadn't heard of. But mainly, I just loved learning how this Canadian wilderness girl, with a sort of endless optimism, who became a summer camp counselor nicknamed "Peggy Nature", became show more a nature loving writer and critic of contemporary culture with what was essentially a contemporary-to-us point-of-view in the mid 1960's. She wrote feminist [The Edible Woman] in 1964 before there was a second wave of feminism. (And I've now read that, and all her points are relevant today). An outsider to America, she pulled [The Handmaid's Tale] from the American religious right around 1981, and from the American Puritan heritage, whose literature she studied at Harvard in grad school. (And other things! Notably from the barbaric Argentinian policy of taking newborn babies from abducted women and having them raised elsewhere. And her tone in the novel is partially from the nature of secrecy she found behind the Iron Curtain in her travels in the mid-1980's.)

Anyway, this is an inspiring life story of a resilient author, with a resilient self-confidence. Her childhood is entertaining, as is her early literary life with no income, her connections in the tiny Canadian art world of the 1960's, her poetry, her tinkering happily with the stage, her relationship with Anansi Press, her strange early marriage and her lifelong non-marriage, her literary relationships, and even her thanking of even those she didn't like in her (18 minute long!) acknowledgements where she asks, what was Cinderella without an evil stepmother. It all comes out with a charming sort of resistance, maybe a Canadian understatement that lands. It's very inspiring memoir.

2026
https://www.librarything.com/topic/377230#9086032 show less

By choice, only read the first 1/4 or so... re: Atwood's childhood and adolescence. Great look at an authentically rural childhood in the wilds of Canada... living in a tent without running water, heat, electricity. Every scene is crisp with detail. Atwood could rewrite the phone book and I'd read it!

This is a superb summary of the personality, interests, quirks and background of an intrepid, chance-taking author near the end of her long career. Two major features are fairly returning nasty barbs received over the course of her writing life, and revealing her family background and cabin/camping life. I particularly enjoyed the latter. Another aspect I really enjoyed was Atwood celebrating the life of her recently departed life partner, Graeme Gibson. All of these book attributes add up to a complex and rounded person, who of course is not just a very successful author. I chose the special edition from Waterstones for my copy, my account with Winnipeg's McNally-Robinson having been blocked for asking that when i request a BRITISH show more book that I receive it in BRITISH English, not American. Quite happy to receive American books in American. ... I'm not sure it's the only difference, but my endboards consist of bits of Atwood's comix. Yet another interesting aspect—and Graeme's life and the many Margaret ones further round them out—is that the final chapter is the transcription of her dad Carl's roundhand-written discovered entomology essay: many lives are presented here. Reading this brick one is constantly amazed by Atwood's knowledge of so many things ... for example, that 1950s sleeping bags were filled with kapok; where does one find that info, and who'd bother to look it up? Just ^what^ "semi-criminal activities of Byron"? One can only imagine the notes she must have taken as the idea for this book gestated ("Oh—include this bit about Dorothy Livesay." "Mention how Graeme cofounded Writers' Trust (or was it The Writers Union of Canada"?) We learn about Point Pelee and bird migration (more an interest of Gibson), get insider peeks at how and under what life circumstances Oryx & Crake or The Penelopiad etc. came about, and get to know just a bit authors such as Margaret Laurence and Dennis Lee ... and if we're the antennae types, we get a long list of to-reads. It's a very richly rewarding read, one that can only have come about thanks to a powerful memory, for even painstaking journal-keeping—and Atwood says this did not come easily to her—would leave too onerous a task. Her siblings etc. assisted, no doubt. Truly enjoyed this, which has got me reading the ones of hers that I've missed. Read it! Strengthen your wrists! show less