If you’re a fair-weather Handmaid’s Tale fan, be warned. There is an awful lot of this memoir to get through before we reach the point where Margaret Atwood publishes the book, let alone sees it snowball into a feminist hit. But Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts is as pacy and fascinating as any of her books. Atwood, 85, feigns an initial lack of interest in memoir writing. Would a salacious tell-all see “the writing itself treated as a by-product that oozed or sprouted from the compost heap of my outrageous behaviour?”
Thankfully, the opportunity to set her own record straight proved too alluring. Aware of her fierce reputation, Atwood bemoans how few people get to see her funny side. Here she is hilarious, with a poet’s eye for detail and endless short, tart punchlines.
Atwood is a careful if gleeful score-settler, making her the best kind of memoirist. Those who crossed her once, or have mitigating circumstances, are not named. Like a literary mafia don she reminds them she knows who they are, or observes that they are probably dead by now. But those who have persisted in jealousy, meanness and lie-spreading are hilariously taken to task.
Canada’s nascent literary circles, it seems, were rather Bloomsbury in their ways
Chief among Atwood’s enemies is Shirley, the ex-wife of her beloved partner, Graeme Gibson. When Shirley’s younger lover kills himself under a train when she won’t run away with him, Atwood remarks “you can’t relocate to the town where the lethal squashing of a lover has taken place”.
Canada’s nascent literary circles, it seems, were rather Bloomsbury in their ways, although they replaced living in squares and loving in triangles with cabin-hopping and partner-swapping. Anyway, Shirley eventually dropped dead (in the house Atwood bought her) so can’t be libelled. The author gets the last laugh, promptly calling an exorcist to ensure the property isn’t haunted.
Atwood understands that it is the petty delights of stone-cold vengeance, along with the major trials and tribulations, successes and heartbreaks that make up a life. She’s lived a good one, and she’s generous enough to share it.
India Block is a writer at The London Standard
Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood is out now (Chatto & Windus, £30)
