Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021
June 1, 2022
Atwood's (The Handmaid's Tale) third collection of essays and pieces is a delight, a treasure trove of musings and thoughts that reflect a mind that is more powerful as each year passes. Topics range from the mundane (a missing recipe box that reflects practicality and nostalgia) to the profound (how to change the world). In between, she shares facets of her life and thoughts. Not every essay will resonate with all, but there are so many gems, listeners will find favorites to revisit more than once. This is a master storyteller at work. Narration is done by a small cast of actors after Atwood voices the introduction. The cast does an excellent job, and it is intriguing to try to figure out why a given narrator was assigned to a given essay. VERDICT Atwood's fans will certainly want to listen to this. She has such a singular voice that she leaves audiences wanting to hear more of her. Recommended for all public libraries, especially those where essays and short stories are popular.--Gretchen Pruett
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from March 14, 2022
Atwood returns to nonfiction (after Moving Targets) with this impressive collection of answers to “some of the burning questions I’ve been asked.” As she writes, “The questions we’ve been faced with so far in the twenty-first century are more than urgent.” “The Futures Market” sees her amusingly parse the popularity of zombies in pop culture (they offer “an escape from a real future we quite rightly fear”), and “Literature and the Environment” addresses the responsibilities writers have regarding climate change: “Unless we can preserve such an environment, your writing and my writing... will become simply irrelevant, as there will be nobody left to read it.” Readers will also appreciate the insight into Atwood’s creative process: “Scientific Romancing” reveals the inspiration she found in Orwell’s 1984, and in “Reflections on The Handmaid’s Tale,” she shares her thoughts about the novel three decades on (“Is prophetic? No. No novel is prophetic except in retrospect”). Despite the oft-serious nature of the collection, there are welcome dashes of levity, as when Atwood describes her encounter with a hard-selling mall clerk who manipulated Atwood’s young daughter into demanding a Cabbage Patch doll. (It wound up “living in squalor at the back of the closet”). The result is a superior assembly of intellectual excursions.