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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Not my favorite Atwood novel, but still good! Felt a little like a Lot of exposition, then frantically tying up the end.
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars.
Joan Foster, after secretly writing cheap Gothic novels under a pen name for years, has finally broken through with Lady Oracle, a mainstream hit that takes her on tour and has her appearing in television interviews. But when Atwood's book begins, Joan has changed her appearance and is hiding out in Italy. Why?
This novel starts out with Joan in Italy, then flashes back to her childhood for context before working its way back up to present day. We learn all about her relationship with her mother, her experiences growing up in a fat body and being excluded or bullied by her peers, and the turning point that made her decide to change her life and move out of her parents' house to set out on her own. Eventually she (and we) meet Arthur, and the pieces fall into place as to how she begins writing professionally and why she has ended up on the run from her life.
Joan feels more alive to me than the protagonists in Atwood's previous two novels (The Edible Woman and Surfacing), though I have to admit, she doesn't necessarily "develop" as we might want her to. We get to know her more fully as the novel progresses, but I don't know that she ever understands herself any better than she did when she was young, or changes in any meaningful mental or emotional way. Still, the desire to find out why she was hiding kept me engaged, and there's a weird character named The Royal Porcupine thrown into the mix who kept things interesting, so all in all, not a bad reading experience.
Joan Foster, after secretly writing cheap Gothic novels under a pen name for years, has finally broken through with Lady Oracle, a mainstream hit that takes her on tour and has her appearing in television interviews. But when Atwood's book begins, Joan has changed her appearance and is hiding out in Italy. Why?
This novel starts out with Joan in Italy, then flashes back to her childhood for context before working its way back up to present day. We learn all about her relationship with her mother, her experiences growing up in a fat body and being excluded or bullied by her peers, and the turning point that made her decide to change her life and move out of her parents' house to set out on her own. Eventually she (and we) meet Arthur, and the pieces fall into place as to how she begins writing professionally and why she has ended up on the run from her life.
Joan feels more alive to me than the protagonists in Atwood's previous two novels (The Edible Woman and Surfacing), though I have to admit, she doesn't necessarily "develop" as we might want her to. We get to know her more fully as the novel progresses, but I don't know that she ever understands herself any better than she did when she was young, or changes in any meaningful mental or emotional way. Still, the desire to find out why she was hiding kept me engaged, and there's a weird character named The Royal Porcupine thrown into the mix who kept things interesting, so all in all, not a bad reading experience.
Comments in <20 words: Far-fetched and content note: abusive childhood, fat shaming, disordered eating, sexual assault, stalking... Oddly captivating.
Shit. I’d danced right through the broken glass, in my bare feet too. Some butterfly. I limped into the main room, trailing bloody footprints and looking for a towel. I washed my feet in the bathtub, the soles looked as if they’d been minced. The real red shoes, the feet punished for dancing. You could dance, or you could have the love of a good man. But you were afraid to dance, because you had this unnatural fear that if you danced they’d cut your feet off so you wouldn’t be able to dance. Finally you overcame your fear and danced, and they cut your feet off. The good man went away too, because you wanted to dance.
But I chose the love. I wanted the good man; why wasn’t that the right choice? I was never a dancing girl anyway. A bear in an arena only appears to dance, really it’s on it’s hind legs trying to avoid the arrows.
Tasty, no?
So says Joan Foster the main character in Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle. A woman who, in her own words, planned her death much more carefully than she planned her life.
I have a lot of Atwood on the shelves here at the Shaky Shack and I finally decided it was time to take one out for a spin. I thought I had read this one before but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I hadn’t. I’ve just been ... carrying it around for a long time. I do that sometimes.
I’m a firm believer in the “right time” to read a book. Not all books. Some books can just be chomped down on any old time, lips licked and on we go. They can be read on the run, between bus stops, standing in line, just before we drift off to sleep. I like some of those books. I also like books that are a bit.... heftier and seem to call out for a longer, quieter stretch. This one felt like that.
I picked it up on a snowy blowy night when the thermometer dipped below -30C. I made some tea, topped it off with some baileys and curled up by the fire.
I forget, sometimes, how witty Atwood is. And how wonderful and terrifying her worlds are. Wonderful because they are peopled with the most amazing and seemingly improbable characters who are.... us. That’s the terrifying part.
For a while, in university, I wanted to... rebel against Atwood. I can’t even remember why. Probably something bizarre like... she was so popular, and smart and ... middle class. I thought. Upper class even. How dare she be! Ahh... youth.
I began a paper on Surfacing for a wild class with Douglas Freake at York University. It was one of those classes that takes a whole bunch of seemingly disparate knowledge and interests and .... folds them all together somehow. It was a humanities class where we pulled apart advertising, pop culture, literature, film, music... all manner of things created by humans. I remember sitting there, near the end of the year, thinking... this is OUTSTANDING. I felt, for a few days, that I was brilliant. That I could suddenly see how the world worked. That all the sh*t I studied in all those other classed finally made sense. Part of this ecstasy came from working on the essay about Surfacing.
I set out to... rip that book apart. To rip Atwood apart, I suppose. To take her to task for... something. To expose her as a faker, a fraud, a soulless darling of the intelligentsia. I was in third year uni. I was more than a bit MAD if you can’t tell. I went in all guns blazing and... Atwood conquered me. The deeper I dug, the more fantastic the book seemed to become. I ended up doing a complete u-turn and singing her praises to the rafters. I was SCHOOLED.
I have the urge to do the same with this one. But I feel... weak and wobbly in my brain. Unable to offer up anything smart, or even witty, let alone INSIGHTFUL.
So, for now, I will just say. This is a good one. It’s chock full of layers and honesty and more than a few giggles.
It is the story of a life lived... almost by accident. A woman who follows the wind and becomes whatever the people she runs into want her to be. Joan Foster is many things, to many people. I finished the book with the hope that she will now, finally, be... herself. In all it’s fullness. With all it’s contradictions and complexities.
May she, and we, find our way to living life for our selves instead of others. To living with intent.
One more tasty quote to tempt you....
Where was the new life I’d intended to step into, easily as crossing a river? It hadn’t materialized, and the old life went on without me. I was caged on my balcony waiting to change. I should take up a hobby, I thought, make quilts, grow plants, collect stamps. I should relax and be a tourist, a predatory female tourist and take pictures and pick up lovers with pink nylon ties and pointy shoes. I wanted to unclench myself, soak in the atmosphere, lie back and eat all the flapdoodles off the tree of life, but somehow I couldn’t do it. I was waiting for something to happen, the next turn of events (a circle? a spiral?) All my life I’d been hooked on plots.
I too have always been hooked on plots.
I just think we ought to be the authors, and heroines, of our own stories. That’s all. And I know M. Atwood agrees.
go easy ~p
What a wild ride. I don't know that this is a stick-to-your-ribs Atwood novel -- it felt a bit messier and I wouldn't be eager to recommend it over her others -- but I still enjoyed it.
Margaret Atwood has been a powerful writer since her first novel. But reading an older novel now, it's clear it's an early work and she developed to be much more impressive (and subtle) later.
While not my favourite Atwood, it was pretty good. Fairly lighthearted and a fun read. The only reason I wouldn't five star it is because I felt it could have been a bit shorter, while I liked it I felt it went on a bit too long.
I finished Lady Oracle over a weekend, without being able to put it down. And yet, once I’d finished it, I was left having mixed feelings about it.
Lady Oracle started off strong, with the first paragraph grabbing my attention immediately. After only a few sentences I knew I want to dedicate my full attention to the book and read it until my eyes hurt. The narration was full of Atwood’s usual poignant insights on the human heart and behavior. You can see the main character’s, Joan’s, complicated personality grow into something wild and intense as a result of bad parenting, bullying at school, and fighting with obesity and being overlooked. Atwood’s observations and understanding were so strong, that I couldn’t help but feel I’m reading something very personal and multilayered. It sometimes even brought back memories from my own past, and gave me the opportunity to look back at them from another perspective.
But somewhere in Part Four of the book, something went wrong. The story started meandering into directions I was not very fond of – Canadian nationalists, communists, dynamite, enemies leaving dead animal’s corpses on doorsteps… Suddenly there was so much happening, so many unrealistic events making Joan look paranoid, but yet strangely absent-minded and detached at the same time, that I lost that fascination I had in the beginning of the book. I did not understand why half of the things happened or how they related to the story, nor did I feel they received any closure in the end of the book. While I felt Joan had turned into an unreliable narrator, partly living in the romantic gothic novels she writes for a living, there were still actual events happening around her that showed she was not all that unreliable. Still, these events did not receive any actual ending. From something serious and insightful, this book became a comedy very much verging on the absurd.
I love Atwood. Always have, always will. Even though Lady Oracle did not become a favorite of mine, I still believe that despite the strangeness of the second half of this book, the first half of it was simply incredible.
Lady Oracle started off strong, with the first paragraph grabbing my attention immediately. After only a few sentences I knew I want to dedicate my full attention to the book and read it until my eyes hurt. The narration was full of Atwood’s usual poignant insights on the human heart and behavior. You can see the main character’s, Joan’s, complicated personality grow into something wild and intense as a result of bad parenting, bullying at school, and fighting with obesity and being overlooked. Atwood’s observations and understanding were so strong, that I couldn’t help but feel I’m reading something very personal and multilayered. It sometimes even brought back memories from my own past, and gave me the opportunity to look back at them from another perspective.
But somewhere in Part Four of the book, something went wrong. The story started meandering into directions I was not very fond of – Canadian nationalists, communists, dynamite, enemies leaving dead animal’s corpses on doorsteps… Suddenly there was so much happening, so many unrealistic events making Joan look paranoid, but yet strangely absent-minded and detached at the same time, that I lost that fascination I had in the beginning of the book. I did not understand why half of the things happened or how they related to the story, nor did I feel they received any closure in the end of the book. While I felt Joan had turned into an unreliable narrator, partly living in the romantic gothic novels she writes for a living, there were still actual events happening around her that showed she was not all that unreliable. Still, these events did not receive any actual ending. From something serious and insightful, this book became a comedy very much verging on the absurd.
I love Atwood. Always have, always will. Even though Lady Oracle did not become a favorite of mine, I still believe that despite the strangeness of the second half of this book, the first half of it was simply incredible.