Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Alias Grace

My thoughts:
This was a very good book, possibly my favourite of Atwood’s so far. So many layers of meaning and a wonderfully unreliable narrator. She had me guessing the entire time: manipulative? a psychopath who merely reflects back what her interlocutors expect? a victim of early abuse and tragedy who’s put out of her mind when faced with trauma and never really regains herself? or a placid philosopher who takes things as they come and reports things as they happened? And what of Dr. Jordan? and Jeremiah? and Jamie Walsh? People appear and disappear and are never surely who they seem to be. Loved it!

Invaluable as social history and as a candid self-portrait of a remarkable woman, Life in the Clearings versus the Bush chronicles, with wit and wisdom, Canadian society in the mid-nineteenth century.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Susanna Moodie

My thoughts:
First off, I have to say that I didn’t enjoy this book as much as Roughing It in the Bush. She spent far less time observing people, places, and customs and a lot more time talking about (the Christian) God. When she did describe life in Canada it was interesting as usual and some parts were fascinating (her observations of the “Lunatic Asylum” for example). There are a couple of essays that were interesting too, especially looking back on things from a century and a half later, like the one about wearing mourning. I don’t know if she would be happy or horrified to see how far those customs have been abandoned. I was particularly intrigued by the story of Grace Marks because I know that Margaret Atwood based her book Alias Grace upon this account. I have yet to read Margaret Atwood’s book, but I will do so soon while the memories are still fresh.

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Lucy Maud Montgomery
the Wikipedia entry for Anne of Green Gables

My thoughts:
I’m rereading this again since it is the 100th anniversary of the book and it’s probably been about 12 years since I read it last. I’m looking at it with quite a different perspective.
–

I read this in a couple of days in late August while lounging at the pool. I did definitely have a different perspective this time ’round. I read Margaret Atwood’s analysis of the book in which she says that the true heroine of the book is Marilla, and this time I paid particular attention to Marilla’s development. I also tried to read it with a view to the Canadian literature which preceded it and was able to compare it to Little Women (very favourably—I didn’t care for the moralising of the latter book. Of course all of that extra background knowledge and focus did not detract a whit from the exuberance, joy, and pathos of Anne’s story.

If you’ve not read this book before, I urge you to pick it up. It’s such a delight.

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia article on Margaret Atwood
the Wikipedia article on The Blind Assassin
the Wikipedia article on the Southern Ontario Gothic literary genre

My thoughts:

Well, I wasn’t disappointed. I love books like this, with several stories going on at once and jumps back and forth in time. I figured out most of the “surprise twists” but it didn’t detract at all from the novel. I really got to know and to like Iris (and to detest her sister-in-law!! not to mention her husband…). I enjoyed the pulp erotic sci-fi parts and the biographical-family history parts in which Iris chronicles the rise and decline of the Button Factory and Port Ticonderoga. Fantastic book. I probably would’ve had more to say if I hadn’t waited 3 months to post about it.

Now we know by the end (though I suspected much earlier) that Richard had had his way with young Laura. I kept getting the sense throughout that there was also something incestuous going on between Richard and Winifred—she seems awfully attached to him…

I imagine some people will be annoyed by Iris’s lack of independence and will to be so controlled like that and not to apprise herself of what was going on with Richard and the factory and Richard and Laura and actively change things, but I think the point is that she was “sold off” at a fairly early age and was taken advantage of by Richard and Winifred.

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia article on Margaret Atwood
the Wikipedia article on Wilderness Tips

My Thoughts:
I enjoyed most of the stories and really liked a few. There were none that I really disliked. However, I imagine I would have liked them better had I read them separately at different times. They did have a kind of sameness about them that was apparent when read in one big clump.

• True Trash (appeared in Saturday Night)
  I found this to be a good opening to the collection. I especially liked the melding of past and present and the viewpoints of the characters–it was almost like a chain or a relay as one perspective was exchanged with another. It gave me hope for the rest of the stories. I needed some hope as I was totally disappointed by the last collection of Canadian short stories (Mount Appetite) that I read.
• Hairball (appeared in The New Yorker)
  Yuck. The subject of the story that is, not the story itself. A woman keeping a pretty disgusting ovarian cyst (as big as a coconut) in a jar of formaldehyde on her mantelpiece. Ewww. What’s worse is what she does with it in the end. I’m sure there’s a bit of black humour in this somewhere.
  ETA: I think I’m enjoying this story more a few days after having read it than I did during or shortly after reading it.
• Isis in Darkness (appeared in Granta UK)
  I really liked this one, but I’m not sure why. Maybe the descriptions of Richard’s image of Selena are so appealing to the Pagan in me.
  ETA: I saw in the Wikipedia article that Selena is based on Gwendolyn MacEwan, a prize winning poet and novelist that’s not on my list. I think I’ll have to add her.
• The Bog Man (appeared in Playboy)
  I like how this story works on two different levels: on the surface there’s a student who gets drawn into an affair with her professor (I knew someone who was in love with one of her professors and Atwood has got the feel exactly right); on the other level, the story is about how we write and rewrite our own experiences.
• Uncles (appeared in Saturday Night)
  Atwood shows great skill in compressing a person’s life into such a short few pages, while retaining so much information that we can see how current events are shaped by that character’s past. To see Vedge only as a mentor and a friend when really he’s jealous and vindictive is a product of Susanna’s “good” relationship with her uncles and bad one with her aunts. Very intriguing–we usually think only experiences of being traumatised cause harm, but in this case her naivete concerning Vedge was helped by the way her uncles treated her and her mother.
• The Age of Lead (appeared in Toronto Life, Lear’s, The New Statesman)
  So far, this is my least favourite story. I didn’t care for the characters and there wasn’t much of a plot. Also, the recovery of Torrington’s body seemed quite a lot like that of the Bog Man’s body in the earlier story.
• Death by Landscape (appeared in Saturday Night, Harper’s, New Woman)
  This story was great. Again, there is that juxtaposition of past experiences with current emotions. I think this is my favourite of the stories in the collection so far. The actions or inactions of one moment can change one’s life forever. So what really happened to Lucy? No splash–surely the other campers would have heard if she had fallen or jumped? I also liked the descriptions of the Group of Seven paintings.
• Weight (appeared in Chatelaine, Cosmopolitan, Vogue)
  The only story in the whole book that’s told from the first person. A nice refreshing change. Very sad though.
• Wilderness Tips (appeared in Saturday Night; The New Yorker)
  This is just the kind of story I don’t care for. It’s kind of like the ending leaves you flat. So what happens? Not in a Lady and the Tiger kind of way, but the kind of “so what happens” for which the answer is “I don’t really care.” Ah well, still– I liked the great-grandfather watching everything from his portrait. I also liked the switch of perspective from George to Portia.
• Hack Wednesday (appeared in The New Yorker)
  I liked this story a lot. The long-married character of the relationship between Marcia (a character based on June Callwood) and Eric. The undercurrent of Canadian-American relations. It would be intriguing to read a sort of updated version of this element of the story.