Margaret Atwood
3 books analyzed
Biography
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (b. 1939) grew up partly in the forests of northern Quebec, where her father — an entomologist — conducted field research. This childhood immersion in wilderness and scientific observation runs through everything she writes. She studied at the University of Toronto and Harvard, published poetry before fiction, and became internationally prominent with The Handmaid's Tale (1985). By 2003, when Oryx and Crake appeared, she was among the most recognized literary figures in the English-speaking world — a position she used to insist, controversially, that her novels were 'speculative fiction' rather than 'science fiction,' on the grounds that everything in them was technically possible with existing or near-future technology. The distinction irritated the SF community but crystallized her artistic method: extrapolation, not invention.
Margaret Atwood at a glance
Works
Oryx and Crake
2003 · 376 pages · ★★★★☆ Advanced
A satire of corporate science run amok, told by the last human on Earth — a man who loved the genius who destroyed everything.
The Blind Assassin
2000 · 521 pages · ★★★★☆ Advanced
A dying woman writes a memoir that reveals she — not her dead sister — authored the scandalous novel everyone attributes to the wrong Chase sister.
The Handmaid's Tale
1985 · 311 pages · ★★★☆☆ Challenging
Written in 1984 by a woman who said she didn't put in anything that hadn't already happened somewhere. That detail never stops being terrifying.
Diction Across Works
satirical-literary
formal-literary
fragmented-lyrical