If you, like me, tend to imagine non-fiction as serious and dry, delving deeply into matters that you prefer stay a mystery, Margaret Atwood’s utterly droll memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts is one of the funniest books in recent times. Honest, self-aware and witty, the confessional note transforms the prose into a writer’s record of all things that shaped her books, with not a dull moment anywhere. Prima facie, this is a book only Atwood could have written – but it is also a book no reviewer has the smarts enough to review. In a nutshell, unreviewable.
Margaret, named after her mother and with the middle name Eleanor, which is also her daughter’s name, though they call her Jess, was Peggy most of her life; also, at some point, Little Carl, after her dad. Her parents were from Nova Scotia, and she picked blueberries as a child. About her young boyfriend Jamie, she says, “not for the last time, I was a cold and unsatisfactory girlfriend”. Of course, the first real BF was not until 1954, and then there is Graeme, the love of her life, who is now no more and to whom she has dedicated the book.
Hair like Medusa’s, curly and frizzy, she appears on the cover with a finger on her lips. She reads palms; it calms down people when you hold their hand and tell them soothing things about themselves, according to her. There is her natal chart (she is a Scorpio with Gemini rising) and her house plans, illustrated and drawn. Also ghosts that she leaves to our imagination, especially a particularly gloomy she-ghoul in red. At some point, because of some bleeding, Atwood describes herself as ‘a polyp-making individual’. Lines that make me feel she wrote this book for me, and only me.
The Introduction makes it impossible to take this book lightly—though light is precisely the note she achieves throughout—as she is so articulate about her intentions for writing it. Apparently, she has been asked many strange questions at book events, including ‘Why is your mouth so small?’ About the ‘why’ of writing, Atwood attributes it to the usual: “… the sensation of something else taking over can’t be ignored; too many writers have testified to it. Flow state, inspiration, characters seizing the initiative from their authors, dream visions, out-of-body experiences …” Mainly caffeine.
Atwood also attempts to separate the writer from the one who is doing the living. Even at a book event, she asks, how can the writer be there, when he is not actually writing right then and there? The one present is the one doing the living—“the two share a memory and even a wardrobe”. O, what fun it is to be Atwood and see things so crystal clear! If only a pair of Atwood glasses were available online.
There’s the story behind the story, be it Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and of course cult hit The Handmaid’s Tale, which came out in 1985. We meet the mean girls of fourth grade, so mean they practically co-write Cat’s Eye—everyone knows a Cordelia. Of particular interest is what she says about The Edible Woman, a book that went viral in its own way when it was published. Since it is impossible not to over-quote her, here is another: “You might become a detective. You might become a con artist yourself. Or, a blend of the two: you might become a novelist.”
These are the Atwood chronicles and painstakingly present before you every pain, every puzzle, every up and down the author experienced. At no point does she go coy on us or arch. Atwood, who has been interviewed and critiqued by both fans and non-fans, is pretty que sera sera about fame. She is not, for instance, in Elizabeth Taylor’s league; she understands. Fame, though, she admits, is better than having an employer.
The humour, of course, is shockingly placed when least expected, in casual banter and even the writing style where dialogues or letters appear in creative ways. One can see how easy it is for someone like her to go from a favourite author to the best memoirist around. As she says, “In view of the subjects of some of my stories and poems, I terrified myself, much of the time.”
Atwood asks at the end of that brilliant introduction: “Wrong turnings, crinolines, abandoned plots, nylons with seams, canoes, lost loves. It’s all material. What will I make of it?”
Turns out, something the critics routinely call ‘unputdownable’. She sighs at the end of the book, “I have used up my thread.” By no means is the thread done using up her.