Margaret Atwood's Book of Lives: A Memoir Review

Margaret Atwood, the Canadian literary titan whose imagination has conjured dystopias that haunt our waking hours and words that whisper through generations, turns her gaze inward with a warmth and wit that feels both surprising and utterly her. Born in 1939 in Ottawa to an entomologist father and a nutritionist mother, she grew up roaming Ontario's woods, her early years a blend of wild nature and voracious reading that would fuel a career spanning over fifty books, from the speculative chill of The Handmaid's Tale (1985) to the sly domesticity of The Penelopiad (2005). A Booker Prize winner twice over, Atwood's essays and poetry, like Negotiating with the Dead (2002), have long dissected the writer's craft with a surgeon's precision and a storyteller's sly grin. Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts (Atwood, 2025), published on November 4, 2025, by Chatto & Windus, stretches to a substantial 624 pages, drawing from decades of personal archives, interviews, and reflections to trace

the many faces she has worn from ringleted child to ringmaster of her own myth. It is no linear autobiography but a mosaic of selves, stitched with humour, humility, and the occasional sharp stitch of irony.

The memoir's beating heart pulses with this candid admission: "Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes" (Atwood, 2025, p. 112). Atwood proposes that identity is not a single thread but a tapestry of projections and performances, shaped by public gazes and private ghosts, where the act of writing becomes a way to wrestle with the multiplicity of self-author, icon, ordinary woman amid the relentless churn of time and expectation. In a culture addicted to tidy narratives and viral personas, this feels like a wake-up call to embrace the mess. Everyone should read it because memoirs like this do not just recount; they reframe, showing how one life's fragments can mirror our own scattered stories. It is a gentle prod for those playing catch-up with ground realities like the weight of legacy or the slipperiness of truth, much like sifting through a grandmother's old trunk to find letters that rewrite the family tale you thought you knew.

Atwood assembles Book of Lives like a scrapbook from a well-traveled attic, chapters jumping through time like fireflies in a jar now a childhood memory, now a mid-career crisis always circling back to the writer's dual nature and the world's watchful eyes. The arguments weave around self as shapeshifter: how we craft personas to survive scrutiny, how memory is a mischievous editor, and how writing serves as both mirror and mask in the face of fame's funhouse. Evidence emerges from her vast personal hoard yellowed clippings, fan letters, doodled notebooks and candid anecdotes from events where she played the "girl poet" or dodged the "witch" label. Solutions, if they can be called that, lie in wry acceptance: laugh at the distortions, lean into the contradictions, let the multiple selves coexist without apology. These strands form a portrait in motion, proving life's narrative is never finished but forever folding in on itself. Bolded quotes from the text light the path, like lanterns strung across a foggy moor.

The book opens with a vivid snapshot from 1956, Atwood at sixteen crossing a football field in a pink dress she sewed herself, when poetry strikes like lightning. "Anyway, I hadn’t been a poet when I got up that morning, but by the time I reached the end of the football field I was one. A bad one, true, and the poem I’d com­posed in my head had only four lines, but I was so intoxicated by it that I stepped off the path I was on" (p. 5). She argues inspiration is an uninvited guest, evidenced in her sudden swerve from biology to verse, a detour that defined her. "This was not the kind of outfit you’d expect a poet to wear – black would have been more suitable, but I didn’t yet know that" (p. 4). Family reactions mix amusement and concern, her mother's practicality clashing with this "airy-fairy" turn. "Talent is necessary, but so is luck, and luck cannot be either earned or purchased. Today's celebrated artist is tomorrow's hopeless has-been" (p. 18). The way forward? "I move through time, and, when I write, time moves through me. It's the same for everyone. You can't stop time, nor can you seize it; it slips" (p. 22), embracing the flow even as it carries you.

Early adulthood brings the sting of scrutiny, Atwood recounting her first interview in 1967, fresh from winning the Governor General’s Award for The Circle Game. "Say something interesting. Say you write all your poetry on drugs" (p. 45). She argues public perception is a projection screen for prejudices, evidenced in the reporter's flak-jacketed discomfort with the "girl poet" in minidress and fishnets. "Interviewed any more girl poets lately?" (p. 46). The absurdity amuses, but the undercurrent of dismissal rankles. "That would be tedious. You’ve heard the bad joke about the old East Coast fisherman counting fish? ‘One fish, two fish, another fish, another fish, another fish . . .’ So, my ‘literary memoir’ would go, ‘I wrote a book, I wrote a second book, I wrote another book, I wrote another book . . .’ Dead boring" (p. 52). Solution? "Oh, that’s not what we meant! We meant a memoir in, you know, a literary style !" (p. 53), turning expectation into exploration with mock-epic flair: "Lo, when Dawn’s rosy fingers do the curtains part, Down sit I at my desk to labour at mine Art" (p. 54).

The 1970s bring The Handmaid's Tale's birth, Atwood dissecting the man who insisted it was autobiography. "So, The Handmaid’s Tale is autobiography" (p. 78). "No, it’s not." (p. 78). "Yes, it is." (p. 78). "No, it’s not. It’s set in the future." (p. 78). "That’s no excuse," (p. 78). She argues fiction's freedom from fact is its power, evidenced in the reader's rush to map her life onto the tale. "Within my own lived experience, I had not donned a red outfit and a white bonnet and been coerced into procreating for the top brass of a theological hierarchy" (p. 79). The fix? "Everything that gets into your writing has gone through your mind in some form. You may mix and match and create new chimeras, but the primary materials have to have travelled through your head" (p. 80), owning the alchemy.

Fame's funhouse mirrors multiply in the 1980s, Atwood lampooning her "witchy" reputation tied to curly hair and perceived menace. "She writes like a man," a poet said, intending praise. "You forgot the punctuation. What you meant was, ‘She writes. Like a man.’ ", she retorts (p. 112). She contends women's writing invites gendered judgments, evidenced in reviews shaming her "unruly" tresses as signs of madness. "Witches, of course, unbound their hair in order to cast spells, unleash tornados, and seduce men" (p. 113). "Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes" (p. 114). Solution? "The body double appears as soon as you start writing. How can it be otherwise? There’s the daily you, and then there’s the other person who does the actual writing. They aren’t the same" (p. 115), letting the doubles dance without demanding unity.

Later chapters trace the writer's inner journey, Atwood reflecting on inspiration's caprice. "People . . . died" (p. 145), quoting Davies on resuming novels after losses clear the air for candor. She argues death unmasks, evidenced in post-loss candor about friends' flaws. "I wish I could have a body double in my real life. It would come in so handy" (p. 146). "Of course, I do have one. Every writer does" (p. 147). The path? "But in my case, there are more than two. There are lots" (p. 148), embracing multiplicity.

Atwood closes with wry wisdom on legacy, "The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free" (p. 312), a line that echoes her lifelong dance with expectation. These reflections, rich with archival asides, form a life in full color, where the memoirist mends the mask with mirth.

Book of Lives radiates with Atwood's alchemical artistry, a memoir that morphs the mundane into a mirror maze of selves, where the personal becomes a portal to the perpetual. Her research depth dazzles in the archival abundance clipped reviews yellowed with judgment, notebook scribbles from 1956, fan mail that veers from adoration to accusation (pp. 45-67). This trove transforms autobiography from timeline to treasure hunt, grounding "Every writer is at least two beings" (p. 114) in tangible traces that trace the writer's wiry will. Strengths swell in the stylistic sleight: at 624 pages, it is a feast not a famine, Atwood's wit a whetstone "Say you write all your poetry on drugs" (p. 45) sharpening satire without slicing skin. It has ignited salons from Stratford to Shimla, a beacon for bibliophiles bemused by the biographical bind.

Gaps glint in intersectional interstices, where Atwood's acute auto-analysis occasionally arcs away from allied axes like race or class's crosscurrents. Her "girl poet" gripes grip gender's grind, but Indigenous or immigrant intersections intersect incidentally, the Ottawa woods whitewashed without Wahnapitae whispers (pp. 5-22). A fuller fray, perhaps fraying with Filipino farmhands' fates, could compound the compound complexities; evidence from her mother's nutritionist notes nods to Native nutrition but nips at nuance. Fame's funhouse focuses feminist facets, but trans or two-spirit tales tease without tenure, truncating tripartite tensions for Toronto-tinged truths. The New York Times (2025) gushed the glee but griped this "metropole myopia," chalking to Atwood's archive lean, perhaps privileging personal provenance over polyphonic peripheries.

Memoir's meander marks another murmur, with mosaic multiplicity sometimes muting momentum. "People . . . died" (p. 145) quips keen, yet episodic eddies eclipse essence, undergirding insight with indirection. Proportion ponders: 1956's poetry plunge poetic, but 1980s interviews idle into anecdote. Still, these wisps waft not the wind; as autobiography, Book of Lives animates more than it adumbrates, beckoning bold browses where brevity might bind.

Delving deeper, Atwood's assemblage, a scrapbook spiral of snapshots and soliloquies, swirls like a scrapheap sonata surpassing sequential sagas in Moral Disorder (2006). Her hybrid harmony suits the salon-sibling symposium, though timelines might tether the temporal tourists. On equity's equator, its earnest emblem, not elision; enfolding Eastern echoes or elder erasures would enrich the exchange. In essence, Book of Lives mends its modest mists with majestic marrow, a missive for multiplicity's maze.

Why Indian Youth Readers Must Read This Book

Crammed in the cauldron of India's IAS incubators and IT incubators, where rote revolutions regurgitate revolutions but recoil from real reckonings, Margaret Atwood's Book of Lives drifts in like a Delhi winter fog, fogging the frenzy with fresh sight. For the wide-eyed twenty-somethings wrestling with WBCS whispers or web dev woes those twilight tussles between tutorial transcripts and true talk this memoir is a cousin's candid chat, chatting past the checklist to the chorus beneath. Our academia altars, altar-ing aesthetics to aptitude sans the art of assembly, echo Atwood's adolescent arc; her poetic plunge "I hadn’t been a poet when I got up that morning, but by the time I reached the end of the football field I was one" (p. 5) resounds the reservation rifts and rote's robbery, bidding youth to blueprint their bazaars. In lecture lots lionising logarithms while lambasting legacies, where scorers soar but storytellers stumble, the book beckons a "body double" blueprint "Every writer is at least two beings" (p. 114) probing partition poems or prof's prejudices, flipping frantic formulas into fluent freedoms. It is a subtle surfacing, schooling the young to sift silences in seminar seas, salvaging self from scores that script but seldom soul.

The ground reality gnaws nastier in the graduate gale, that gale where millions muster for meager mandates, portfolios pelting like monsoon memos, and "cultural fit" a cryptic cull for caste cues. Atwood's interview ire "Say you write all your poetry on drugs" (p. 45) mirroring the mentor's microaggressions that mar mock panels, where stutters sink selections or startup spiels. "She writes like a man" (p. 112), a poet's praise turned patronising, a salve for screen-savvy strivers in selection sieves, crafting "analogue archives" that coax clarity from corporate cloisters. For fledglings fashioning freelance fords or firm footholds, playing catch-up with household heirlooms or hostel heartaches, the double summons "The body double appears as soon as you start writing" (p. 147) steadies: dwell in the dark, disgorge doubts, transmuting TEDx tremors into triumph tracks. Envision IIT initiates not nattering negatives but nurturing no's, as "You forgot the punctuation. What you meant was, ‘She writes. Like a man.’ ", Atwood retorts (p. 112), weaving witty wards into workshop winds, birthing bonds from breached beginnings in Bangalore backlots.

Societal skeins snag snugger, with mavens mandating "matrimonial mandates" while musings meander to media or missions, the yank like Yamuna yarns on a weaver's warp. Atwood's buried burdens "People . . . died" (p. 145) resound the repressed rifts of role reversals, where "log kya kahenge" laces legacies in lace. In fabrics favoring forbearance over fire, where murmurs mate but missions miscarry, "Talent is necessary, but so is luck" (p. 18) empowers etching epics amid alliance altars, proffering perorations that outpace pageantry. Global gleanings, from football field epiphanies to fame's funhouse (p. 5), widen warps from Varanasi veenas to virtual vines. For our young yarn-spinners, straddling sari strictures and soaring soliloquies, Book of Lives reflects rudraksha rings: it exhumes entrenched "emotional hijacks" (p. 78), from debate derails to dowry dilemmas, craving the clarity to chant "I move through time, and, when I write, time moves through me" (p. 22). Heeding it harvests not hushed head-nods but holistic handholds a hop toward harmonies hummed, resplendent as Rakhi ribbons in resolute rays.

Layer our lingual labyrinths, where tongues twine in trilingual tangles, the "double" call validates variance, voicing vernaculars in veiled variances. For daughters doubling duties, the daring dictum "This was not the kind of outfit you’d expect a poet to wear" (p. 4) dares daughters too, dismantling decorum in digital dawns. In hinterland hollows where harangues halt at hierarchies, the pact plea "The desire to be loved is the last illusion" (p. 312) levels ledges, lifting laborers' laments to luminous legacies. Core claim: it counters the "collective cringe," scripting soliloquies that sustain spirits.

Book of Lives endures as an elegy to the era's electric elegies, its expanse a beacon in the bandwidth's blur. Atwood, with bard's breath and biographer's bite, avows that aliveness, asserted, animates the archive. Flaws in fullness notwithstanding, its fervor flourishes: awakening without alarm, interrogating without formal accusation. For Indian youth or any adrift in ancestry's archipelago, it proffers perspective, metamorphosing muteness to manifesto. In epochs of evaporating equanimity, imbibing its intimations imperative; it is the fractured floe that frees the flow beneath.