Reviews for...

March 2004     A Christmas gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.

Ah, now this was a good collection of short stories. I didn't know that starting out though, so I was a little surprised at the way the (assumed) novel was developing. And... it took some readjusting, to -have the feeling for short stories; I didn't know exactly how to take them in, or what to make of them. It was only with the 4th or so, of the ten in this book, that I truly caught their form, and appreciated the... way they were written; Put together.

I can say that all the protagonists were female... but little more than that; I do not criticise that fact, nor do I celebrate it: I only observe it, and note that there are also many men who only write from the male point of view. Though some of the stories dealt with specifically "Feminine" situations, (a girl's relationship with the men of her Family, Or the challenge in a male dominated industry,) the rest were more "universal", dealing with such things as technological societies, affairs, deaths, art, and such things.

The stories are all... capturing; they take me in, and fill me with interest. Some of them were riveting, and I could only be glad that they were short, otherwise I would have spent too long reading them, (while I should have been sleeping, or warming up, or something.)

Isis in Darkness I loved, for it dealt with art, and poetry, and... a genius, -then ended in Tragedy. -And all throughout, there was a feeling of Fantasy, and the certainty that there would be Magic, and mysticism in this tale. An element of the supernatural. -And then, at the end, we see that the Magic, and Fantastic, was only in the imaginative mind of the narrator, and that it was simply another mortal, doing human, mundane things. This left me with the thought, that there IS magic in our world, and the Gods walk among us... if we would only believe it. If we'd only bother to imagine it, it would then be Magic in our lives.

That feeling: of Fantasy, but in the end, it only being from a... youth-like imagination, recurrs, (to my mind,) in a few of the stories. In Death by Landscape, it was reversed: the whole story is from a logical, realistic, tragic world. Then, at the end, there's Her Imagination that the friend... never really died: that she just disappeared, or turned into a tree. -Or why not into some animal of the woods instead? But this story sticks out in my mind as particularly good; It... describes, and explains ONE little aspect of the character's life: Why she has a number of pictures of Nature Landscapes in her home. It is no more, and no less than what is required to give an understanding of that. It's not a complete biography, but just... this one episode, that led, eventually, to her having these paintings.

It's a way of story telling, that I feel I often wish to perform myself. (For example, when someone asks me about which language I studied in school... Because the complete answer touches on My Parent's, and Home schooling, And Ballet school in Montreal, and then working in Estonia, and Germany. It's a complete little story, with a final answer hard to understand without it.) -Then it's the exact same feeling I have in this tale of Atwoods: that the Paintings are a simple part of her Life, which she's so long accustomed to, but needs particular background for anyone else to understand.

And then, it's well written, and interesting, the way it's told. She's worth reading.

June 2005     My Birthday gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.

The ending of this book is... strong. At least, I mean that it gets as strong reaction. My personal one was to throw the book down, with my jaw open in disbelief, and then telling all around me, that "that's just NOT the right way to end a book." I was personally affronted that M. Atwood could leave it so open. This doesn't mean I disliked the book though, or even the ending. I have so great a respect for it, and the Author, because she left it so open. That she could build it up to such an intriguing climax, and then leave it unconcluded. And it worked. There was nothing inherently wrong in what she did.

Perhaps I need to explain myself a little. (And apologize now, if I'm ruining the ending for people.) The book is about the last survivor of the human race, living some 40 or 50 years in the future, in a world where the upper and middle classes are strictly separated, (with security guards and barbed wire fences.) And Genetic Engineering is the one Big Business. It has become a major player in society, being the means of most scientific changes, agriculture, live-stock modifications, warfare, sabotage, and human-modification. (For humans though, I mean only anti-aging treatments, extreme cosmetic surgery, and lots of snake-oil for the sex-drive.) The story it's self is about the killer (designer) virus that wipes out the human race, and leaves this one simple, peaceful genetically-designed-from-the-ground-up human-like species free to live in the world as they please. (It would be simplest to say that these beings were planned to be happy, easily controllable subjects to any country who would like to buy them. -That would not be accurate, but that would be a simple explanation as to why they were developed.)

Anyhow, The Last surviving human tells his tale, about his meager roll in the End of Humanity, which was the part of Friend to those who were taking action. As we discover his story, we grow to care for him. We see, in the end, how little he has to live for, and how it was his best friend, and his only deep love, who together ended the world as we know it, and left the Narrator to guide the Human-Like beings out into the wild, so that they might populate the earth.

And how does it end? With our Narrator finding three other humans left alive. Three others, that mean he is not, in the end, alone. And what then? Well, he's thinking about wether or not he will confront these people. If he does, will they accept him, or see him as a rival for the few remaining resources? So should he just kill them while he has a chance, or simply leave, and let them leave that part of the land? And we are left with him thinking "Now I'll have to make my choice."

So we don't know what he does, we don't know if these three are nice humans, we don't know if he finds once more forgiveness of the human race, and we don't know if the engineered humans survive and thrive. It is All left open.

Now, what else do I have to say? There should be a lot, because this was not just a small book. It leads the mind down a great number of thought-ways, and lights upon a number of human traits. Some could be classed a virtues, some as vices. Others, make one wonder which category they belong in. One of the hardest things for me, was trying to find what I thought of the dynamic between the Narrator, and his one deep love. She was brought out of a third-world country, as a sex-slave. (That is brutal, perhaps too much so, but how else can you describe a person who was put into porno-movies from the age of about 8,and then sold to be a prostitute, and then taken by a man in America, -Possibly to be only a house-cleaner?) She accepts it all as her past, and has no hatred for the people who made her life that way. Our narrator loves her deeply and very protectively, and can not accept the forgivenance of the people in Her earlier life. (And there have been just TOO many Phonecalls in this last paragraph, and I haven't got a sodding clue what I meant to say, and I'm ever so irate about all the interruptions, and with how complicated my life is trying to be this afternoon. Sheesh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Umm... where was I? I think I meant to say that I don't know which of the two I agree with, because I can understand them both. A man cannot forgive the men who used his love as a... sex... thing. (see above for the short list of what her body was valued as.) I can also understand Her, (Oh, wait, one more interrupting phone call.)

I can Understand her, and the way that she grew up this way. It was common in her impoverished, overpopulated village, to sell the children to the Rich men of the City. And things just continued from there. She saw what her life would be like, and -well, what more is there to it than that? Why blame these men, who, if they hadn't of taken Her, would have found other women/girls? One way or another, they were the ones who supported her. Some were kind in their way, and some were rotten. But they were all just human, (in her eyes.) So... my real problem, is figuring out if I see that situation from her eyes (which doesn't quite seem right,) or through his eyes, (which also doesn't quite seem right. Because he blames all of them, and hates them indiscriminately, even though some of theme were truly kind to her.)

Right then. So. There's lots to see, and hear, and think about in this book. There's the many ethical questions it poses about ... well, starting with genetic-engineering, and going on with class separation, higher education, and all sorts of social this-and-that. (There is Also a fly that's going around me, and feels a huge attraction to my legs, so I'm continually twitching it off, and I'm just not in the solid and calm state of mind to focus on what I thought about this book.)

Um... Good book. Very good book. I read it all, in a short time. Um... Oh... and by the way... Was the destroyer of Humanity wrong to do so? If his aim was to have a new, better, modified Humanity, which would be forever peaceful, fair, and kind to everyone, and to all animals? True, ideally, every single human in the world should have been given the choice to let themselves be replaced or not, or at least a vote about whether it's a good idea. But... as that wouldn't have worked, is it wrong to "fix" the problems of the world? If it's only possible like that?

April 2006     A Christmas gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.

Interesting. The other books that I've read by Atwood, (Those here, and The Handmaid's Tale, which I read some years ago,) had some degree of Science fiction about them. (Set in the future, or with at least some hints of the paranormal, as in a few of the stories of Wilderness Tips.) This one though, is based on History: a murderess in Toronto, around 1850. It tells her story. (OK though, I admit that it has a little mundane "magic" in it: Superstitions about opening windows to let out the souls of people who'd just died. And peeling an apple on newyear's eve, to find out the first letter of the name of the man you'll marry.)

The form that the tale is told in adds to it's interest: It's not so... Linear. (By that, I mean that it doesn't tell the tale from her birth, to her middle age, to her old age, without any circumstance of her life being told out of it's chronological place.) The book starts with Grace having been in Prison for about fifteen years. She is used to her life of incarceration, and doesn't expect any changes until the day she dies. It's into this life that a fairly young Psychologist comes, who is interested in her tale, and wants to go over the facts of her life, (Again; There have been a great number of people who'd at one time or another been interested in her case.) His hopes are to understand the workings of the "criminal mind," or if not, to be able to understand, and perhaps prove, if she was clinically mad at the time of the murders.

So, we have the story of this man, and his being in Toronto, taking place "chronologically," while at the same time, going over the full story of what had happened to Grace, and how she'd come, eventually, to be there in Prison, and talking with him. I feel that it's always an interesting way to be told a story, (when it's well done,) to know what the ending is going to be, before the story even begins.

So, some of the themes covered... the Woman's Place, according to society in those times. Especially a Servant's place. Also, it looks at the treatment of criminals, and of the Insane. Then there's the Jealousy. Also, the public's heartlessness in it's dealing with criminals. (They want it to be sensational. They will accept nothing else. And if there's going to be an execution... well THEN! It's time to spend the day in town, just to witness that!)

But the great, huge surprise comes near the end. (And if you think you're going to read this later, than you can now skip this whole paragraph, because I'm going to be giving away the big surprise!) When Grace is put into deep hypnosis, to see what really happened at the time of the murders. (And this is where the most... paranormal element comes in.) We find that the spirit of her long dead friend has been residing inside of her. So, at the times of the murders, she really DID pass out, and lost all consciousness. It was her old friend, who then took control of her body, and did what ever deeds there were to be done. And it wasn't the first time either: there were other points of her life, where she'd woken up, to find herself in somewhat strange situations, and with people behaving differently to her. BUT... I don't take this all to be so supernatural: I think that it's left open enough, for us to believe, (if we wish,) that it was not a separate Spirit, which entered her head, when her friend died, but rather a mental disorder. I think that Grace, as she is presented in this book, had a sort of split personality. And under moments of great stress, she would unintentionally switch over to her other personality, and then have no recollection of it the following day. I feel that this other personality is indeed Based upon her old friend, whom she loved, and whom she wished to be like, but was too afraid to be so... bold. One way or the other though, it was a shocking revelation, and put everything that had happened in the book into a new light. I'd rather like to go back through the whole book now, and see if I can understand What in fact had happened, when Grace was "Dreaming," or unconscious.

There were three more things at the end of the book which stuck in my mind, and left me pondering over them; One was nearly at the end, when she has within her "a life or a death, but not knowing which one." It's just... a Weird notion. (To explain it: it's either a pregnancy, which is unlikely, or a cancerous tumor, which is no less unlikely.) It's being on such an edge, between extremely good, and extremely tragic. I want so badly for it to be a child for her, but I know that there's nothing to make that more likely beyond my own personal wish.

Another thing, was the Forgiving of one another. As an old man, James Walsh asks again and again to be forgiven, for the role he'd played in Grace's conviction. It is such a central and important thing in his thought. But grace feels that there's nothing there at all to be forgiven. Still, James needs it. He feels a need to make a huge production out of it, and heap as much guilt onto himself as possible, so that he can be forgiven for ever greater amounts of guilt. -And does this remind me of something vaguely Christian? Something along the lines of "We're all Sinners! None are innocent! You are evil, have thought evil, have spoken evil, have helped evil, and have spread evil! Admit you are EVIL! Embrace the fact! and NOW... Be forgiven! Yes yes yes yes yes!!!!!!!!!" Perhaps we, (humanity,) have a rather deep seated need to be forgiven. And the greater the amount we can be forgiven, the better we feel.

That is only how James wants his forgiveness though. Grace's ideas about forgivenance are rather different; She says that it is not the ones who commit crime who need to be forgiven, but those who are sinned against. It makes more sense in Grace's personal case: The woman who was murdered had no more problems at all. And Grace had to spend many many years before she could forgive the anguish that this murder created in Her life. And it's the same with everything bad that she does: Her life is filled with remorse, while the others can forget it as being something which was in the distant past. She needs time to forgive them for letting whatever it was happen. And that is how it's the opposite of James: If he were like Grace, then his whole life would have been filled with remorse for what he'd done against Grace. And he would only feel the relief when he is able to forgive Her, at last. (And not have Her forgive Him.)

Ah, and the last thing, was the last page... which was throwing my mind into loop: Grace feels good, and closure, and that all is right, when the three main women of this book come together in a way; Grace, Her long dead friend, and the woman who was murdered. There are just too many possible meanings for this. Is it the putting together of the people who had the strongest positive and negative influence on her life? Is it putting together the two who's persons most shaped her life? Or is it because they both died? Or because they both died in connection with her? Or because the Death of the one led to the death of the other, through Grace? I don't even know what this ending means to Me, much less what it meant to Margaret Atwood.

And now that I've written all this, and have said all which is in my head to say, based on the Story, I feel free to read the Author's note at the end of the book, which is going to tell about the true, Historical facts about the person of Grace Marks.

A little over a month later, doing the dishes, I thought to myself, "The term for that could be 'Inferiority Complex' couldn't it? Now, what was the 'that' though?" It didn't take long to look through the recent reviews I'd written though, for the word "forgive" -and see... that the fit was not an exact one. Or is it? Is James's behaviour somehow related to an Inferiority Complex? No... Perhaps a Guilt Complex would be more accurate. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what a guilt complex really is. But I think... from now on, I'll imagine it as being exactly what I read in this book; A unconquerable feeling of guilt. Which remains with a person, regardless of how much atonement they perform, and how often they were forgiven. -Which is related to the inferiority idea in that the person is just as certain that they are inferior, regardless of how well they appear to do, and how much praise they elicit from others.

Feb. 2019     Lying around in the Canteen.

Well now, let's see if I'm still able to write one of these, after a ten-year interim. This book was just sitting in the theater and I had a production in which I sat around doing nothing for great sweeps of time, so I put these two circumstances together.

This is not a novel, but rather a collection of short stories, or as Margaret puts it, "nine wicked tales." Tales, because they're a bit more removed from reality than "Stories," and Wicked, because the stories all have a greater or lesser tinge of malice, unforgivingness or cruelty in them; A darker side of humanity, and often enough this element is in the protagonist. At times the protagonist draws sympathy from the reader, and if they feel the need to murder someone we're given the whole back-story, and can see how very wronged she was. In other tales the protagonist is just a jerk; the motives are shown us, and the back-story, but the motivation seems to be more out of littleness, pettiness or selfishness.

The form of this book, it being a collection of short Tales, was very well suited to my situation; my reading being interrupted every 7 to 15 minutes made it too hard to concentrate on one longer story. Here it was alright when a character with all his details had been half forgotten after a couple of days. At the same time it was fascinating the way the first three tales were woven together; A slice of life of one elderly lady, including the lifelong scars left from her first relationship. The next tale was about the final days of the man from that relationship. And the next was about the woman he'd been cheating with all those years ago in that relationship. It was interesting to have not just the three viewpoints of the love-triangle, but to have these viewpoints through a 40-year retrospective lens. What does it mean to each character after such a long time, and how has it formed them as people?

Old age would be the second theme of this book, (after the darker side of humans.) Most of the narratives are from the perspective of the elderly. Often it is with reminiscences of their younger days, and perhaps it was in those days that most of the "action" took place. Still it is done through reflection of someone old and I wonder if this is a reflection of M. Atwood feeling the weight of her age and including it in her works. (This perspective wasn't disturbing me - it was noticeably present, that's all.)

More I can not think of to write. I could delve into each of the 9 Tales, but I do not have the time for that, and as I said, I've forgotten most of the details of the earlier tales by now. In general, the author has once more done a good job of making her characters believable, compelling, interesting and human. Even the ones we can't like we can understand.