Modern Fiction Books > Margaret Atwood Modern Fiction Books

Advantages: Funny and highly entertaining.
Disadvantages: Like all Atwood , is a bit wordy.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood is based on Homers Odyssy. This however is not simply the idiots guide to Homer! Its an interesting exploration into the thoughts and feelings of Penelope (wife of Odysseus) written with her as the narrator after her murder. The voice is of a bitter woman who has not forgiven her husband for leaving her for years and years and then later having her killed - which seems understandable to me! Whats also interesting ...
...viewed as a sex symbol and steals men! A great story, very witty and sarcastic with a decent amount of sex and scandal thrown in for good measure! Another triumph by Atwood and well worth listening to. It comes highly recommended by me and all my friends who borrowed it afterwards. ... Read review

Advantages: Multi-layered and complex
Disadvantages: Distracting, only read it if you have time to devote to it.

...something of a god-complex. Oryx is an enigma, you never learn her "real" name or anything concrete about her past. She skims past details and isolates emotions from her history. She and Crake ironically represent God to Snowman's new charges despite the part they had to play in earth's downfall. The combination of creator and destroyer is interesting to say the least and the non-deification of the snowman is amusing as it is he who has spun these ... Read review

Advantages: Easy to read
Disadvantages: Couldn't put it down!

I managed to consume this book in less than 24 hours by completely forgetting my own life and becoming so absorbed in the heroine's. This book confronts so many issues from body weight to bullying and how we long to escape from our present life to find the ever elusive "happy ever after". I found it easy to read, humorous yet sad. There was just enough left to the imagination to leave questions for the reader that may or may not be answered! It ... Read review

Advantages: You could read and savour them one at a time
Disadvantages: Some of them seem almost too short

Having hungrily devoured several of Margaret Atwood's novels, from 'The Handmaid's Tale' through 'Surfacing' to 'Alias Grace', I was intrigued to see 'Murder in the Dark' described as a collection of 'short fictions and prose poems'. I make several long bus journeys a week, and if you're sandwiched between giggling schoolgirls and someone booming down their mobile phone while the guy at the back is singing along to Alice Cooper on his ipod, it's ...
...page novel. But these little gems take just a couple of minutes each to read and each demands to be savoured before you go on to the next one. 'Autobiography' is a description of a landscape that starts with a blue line and goes on to scan a lake, a white cliff and a forest. The piece ends with the idea that the landscape ceased to be a landscape not because of a visual feature but because of a smell - the smell of a half-eaten carcass of a deer. ... Read review

Advantages: britlliant use of language and literary techniques
Disadvantages: non-linear narrative may appear challenging

...is an uterly compelling read. Surfacing traces the physical and psychological journey of it's unnamed protagonist as she begins to dissct the fabricated lies of her past on a quest to achieve self-integration. Atwood's characterisation and manipulation of language throughout the novel provides the reader with a complex, intriguing and in some places frustrating narrative, which in turn envolpes the audience, immersing them in the narrators own journey. ... Read review