Tag: Nan A. Talese

Books

Book 659: The Testaments (The Handmaid’s Tale #2) – Margaret Atwood

Geoff W

I did not expect to read this so soon or so quickly. When I first heard Atwood was revisiting The Handmaid’s Tale nearly 35 years later I was incredibly wary about it. With the success of the Hulu series, I wasn’t surprised she was revisiting it, but I was hesitant to jump into this feet first so I put my name on the hold list at the library for an e-book version expecting not to get it until early-2020. They must’ve bought additional copies because I got it within two months of release!

There WILL be spoilers, so if you don’t want to know anything that happens stop now.

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ARC, Books

Book 387: The Heart Goes Last – Margaret Atwood

Geoff W

Atwood, Margaret - The Heart Goes LastI didn’t quite get this one read before it’s release, but considering how busy I’ve been, having it read and posted within a week of its release, September 29, is pretty impressive! Any time there is a new Atwood, I get excited. Margaret Atwood is the Queen of Speculative Fiction, among other things. So when I had the opportunity to request a copy and the publisher, Nan A. Talese granted it*, I was over the moon.

I still have a few older Atwood’s on my shelf to read, but the last I read was Stone Mattress and I really liked where she was going. This being said, I’ve seen quite a few reviews recently of The Heart Goes Last where I’ve wanted to slap the reviewers and say WHAT ABOUT THE BOOK? Mostly people were complaining they had bought the first few chapters on a website and then had to buy the whole book to find out what happened (Hello, single song releases?! Do we not remember the “old days” of the 1990s – early 2000s?) As this doesn’t affect me and most readers, I don’t see why it’s important so don’t let that impact your judgement!

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ARC, Books, Quotes

Book 302: Stone Mattress – Margaret Atwood

Geoff W

Atwood, Margaret - Stone MattressAtwood is an incredible writer and story teller and there’s really not much more that needs to be said, so when I saw her newest collection of short stories I knew I had to request it! I received a copy from the publisher, in return for my honest opinion:

Spectactular.

That would be a little cruel, to leave it just at that even though it would still describe it perfectly. Below, you’ll find a one-to-two sentence review of each of the nine tales and a single quote from each.

On a different note, if you haven’t heard Margaret Atwood is the first author of the future library! This is a project where authors are asked to write a work and it won’t be read for 100 years. This makes me both incredibly happy, as she writes such fantastic speculative/near future fiction, but also sad that I won’t be able to read it! It’s a fascinating project and I could go into it in detail, but really you should just read about it at The Guardian.

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Books

Book 228: MaddAddam (MaddAddam #3) – Margaret Atwood

Geoff W

Atwood, Margaret - MaddAddamWhat a great ending to the trilogy. It wasn’t exactly what I expected and it definitely left me wanting more, but overall I think it was a great book. If I hadn’t read these books back-to-back with this book’s release I can definitely see how I could have been disappointed in this denouement, but as I didn’t have to wait for the next books in the series I thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

Although I enjoyed The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam neither were as great as Oryx and Crake. I’m not sure if it’s the change in writing style, which was minimal or if the last two in the trilogy didn’t have the wonderment of discovering a new old world, but they just didn’t quite live up to the first book. All three made me feel emotions and were beautifully written, so I would definitely recommend them!

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Books

Book 227: The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam #2) – Margaret Atwood

Geoff W

Atwood, Margaret - The Year of the FloodWhat a great continuation of this series! And for a middle novel of a trilogy it definitely held its own which is not always the case. I also enjoyed reading Atwood from a different angle, although it was only a tiny bit different from her other books.

As I mentioned in my Oryx and Crake review every book I’ve read by Atwood has a single narrator who tells their story through a series of flashbacks. This book continues that theme, but rather than it being the same narrator there are two narrators, Ren and Toby, in this book telling their stories.

However, there were again SO many similarities. Each of the narrators, similar to Snowman/Jimmy, experiences the post-apocalyptic world in isolation until about midway through the novel. So looking back at all the characters of Atwood, they’re all isolated (physically, mentally and emotionally) and they all tell their stories from their own perspective. But this is not a bad thing! Atwood gets into each of her character’s minds and creates believable and unique characters which are amazing mirrors of humanity.

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