There is something about reading Margaret Atwood that makes me feel like I’ve been missing some key ingredient all this time – the magic ingredient that makes reading feel more like love, and love more like a beautiful interpretation of the text.
I just finished reading Cat’s Eye, which I brought with my on my honeymoon and wasn’t able to get into it until I was recently sick with the flu. Margaret Atwood writes with the beauty of poetry. Her dialogue and characters are haunting and in this fevered moment of a finished book – I am hard pressed to come up with another author that is able to write with such beauty.
In each of her novels I have read so far: The Handmaid’s Tale, The Robber Bride, Surfacing I find similarities between the characters and some of their actions, but these things don’t feel like I’m being fooled – instead it feels as if Atwood is tugging at some memory I have of myself, those these memories are not truly my own. I can easily see how I could go on a binge of Atwood, without even trying. Unlike a single novel in a series, Margaret Atwood’s novels are complete on their own, but depth is added with each completed work.
In this sense of senseless wonder, I feel compelled to just sit around and contemplate the characters – their own complexities, the dimensions of her locations, and how all these elements tie together to give me a sense of perspective into my own life.
Damn I sure do love me a good book.
