My hold on Margaret Atwood’s memoir, Book of Lives, arrived in late November. It’ll be my first read for Doorstoppers in December. I’d also been casually rereading her 1983 short story collection Bluebeard’s Egg and managed the first two stories; I’ll return to the rest next year. A recent Guardian interview stated that Atwood had written in “every genre … except autobiography” and quoted her as saying “I’m an old-fashioned novelist. Everything in my novels came from looking at the world around. I don’t think I have much of an inner psyche.” Is this her being coy or facetious? Because, particularly among the short stories, there are many incidents taken from her life. Indeed, in the 140 pages of Book of Lives that I’ve read so far, there are frequent mentions of how people or events made their way into her fiction and poetry. Perhaps most obviously in Cat’s Eye, a novel about childhood bullying by girlfriends.

Bluebeard’s Egg opens with two Alice Munro-esque stories, “Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother” and “Hurricane Hazel,” both of which track with facts revealed in the memoir. The former draws on her mother Margaret’s Nova Scotia upbringing as the daughter of a country doctor (to avoid confusion, Atwood was nicknamed “Peggy”). Out of a welter of random stories comes the universal paradox: that she is in some ways exactly like her mother, and in others couldn’t be more different. It closes: “I had become a visitant from outer space, a time-traveller come back from the future, bearing news of a great disaster.” The latter story features a young teenage girl in a half-hearted relationship with an older, cooler boyfriend, mostly because she thinks it’s what’s expected of her. Atwood addresses it explicitly:

Let’s call this boyfriend “Buddy,” which is how he appears in a story of mine called “Hurricane Hazel.” Buddy and I broke up on the night of this famous hurricane, which flooded the Don Valley and killed eighty-one people in Toronto. Buddy wanted to go out that night, but my father, snapping out of his inattention—this was, after all, a matter of the weather, something he always kept his eye on—said it was out of the question. Didn’t Buddy know what a hurricane was? Far too dangerous!

One can also trace The Penelopiad (see my first post for Margaret Atwood Reading Month 2025) back to Atwood’s high school experiences with the Greek classics.

Who knows when an “influence” may begin? My own 2005 book, The Penelopiad, had its origins fifty years before, when I’d been horrified by the brutal treatment dished out to Penelope’s twelve maids by Odysseus and Telemachus. After being made to clean up the blood from the suitors who’d raped them and were subsequently slaughtered by Odysseus, they were hanged in a line. “Their feet twitched, but not for very long.” A line I have always remembered.

As to Book of Lives in general, I’m finding it delightful but also dense with detail and historical context. Atwood grew up between the wilderness and the city because of her entomologist father’s seasonal fieldwork. She was called “Little Carl” due to how much she resembled her handy father, who built the cabins and houses they lived in as well as most of their furniture. With her beloved older brother, Harold, she was free to explore and later, as a camp counsellor, was known as “Peggy Nature” for her zoological expertise. She could easily have become a scientist but fell in love with crafts and the humanities, sewing her own clothes and writing an opera for Home Economics class. By the end of high school, she’d decided she was going to be a poet.

A cute pic of her from her Substack

I’m impressed by the clarity of Atwood’s memories; all I remember of my school days wouldn’t fill one chapter, let alone four. It could be argued that some of this is superfluous – a whole chapter on several summers as a counsellor at a Reform Jewish camp? But it’s her prerogative to choose the content and no doubt, always the novelist, she’s seeding important facts that will come to fruition later. As ever, her turns of phrase are amusing and her asides witty. There is a wonderful trove of photographs and artefacts for illustration. Although she effortlessly recreates her experience at any age, her perspective is salted with hindsight. I can already tell, making my way steadily through, 25 pages at a time, to return this by the deadline, that I’m going to need to read it again in the future to take it all in. Ideally, I’ll get my own copy so I can use the index to return to any scenes I want to revisit.

Bluebeard’s Egg – Little Free Library

Book of Lives – Public library