The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood by Coral Ann Howells was recommended to me by a friend and colleague who teaches Atwood poems to advanced students. I plan to teach The Handmaid's Tale this year and wanted more insight into it. I also want to use more of Atwood's poetry that is not easily accessible with a quick online search. Often students will look up the meaning of a poem or novel and this squashes their initial critical thinking. Generally, I like to read a novel first with only my third eye.
I enjoyed the essay, Blindness and survival in Margaret Atwood's major novels, by Sharon R. Wilson. Wilson illustrated an insightful approach to novels like Oryx and Crake and Cat's Eye. I will have to read Oryx and Crake now, but I still did not connect with Cat's Eye. I really didn't like the narrator, Elaine, despite the interesting survival journey Atwood presented. I just don't like an emotionless character, even when the writer picked a palette of greys that lead to a marble in a red pocketbook, an insufficient ending. Offred in Handmaid's Tale also seemed void of emotion, but the situation made her character work for me rather than Elaine's. Offred had a reason to become indifferent. Her choices were eliminated. Elaine seemed to have too much choice.
Novels aside, I also enjoyed Branko Gorjup's Margaret Atwood's poetry and poetics. I adore Atwood's poem, Quattrocento. The line, "The kingdom of god is within you/because you ate it." Gorjup says, "Eve is metamorphosed into a true protean self as the whole of a diverse creation disappears into her and she is a free agent now, alive with possibility."
Eve as a free agent is fantastical.
I ended up with a four star rating for this, because some of it I did not understand as well as I would have liked on a first read, but I've only read three Atwood novels and a few poems. I will have to change that.
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