I postponed my Monday post because I wanted to wait until I'd heard Margaret Atwood so I could tell about that. InPrint Houston brought her here as part of their Reading Series. They've featured such famous authors as Salmon Rushdie, Amy Tan, and Joan Didion, but Atwood was the best.
A slim woman with a cloud of silvery hair, she had the 1100 people crowded into the huge auditorium spellbound as she read snippets from various publications. She had the audience in stitches with "Stone Mattress," reccently published in The New Yorker. By the time she finished the "teaser," we knew the narrator is a predatory female on the hunt for husband #5, she's on an Alaska cruise (Atwood said she wrote the story to amuse her fellow passengers on a recent cruise she took), that someone is going to die. I can't wait to download the story at the New Yorker website and read the rest. She had us laughing with a bit from a short story about a papier mache head, and we were enthralled at her reading from her latest book, The Year of the Flood.
Her sense of humor was evident. She even laughed along with us at her writing. Her wide ranging interests were also clear. She said she reads Science, The National Geographic and similar magazines to relax on planes. Her avid interest in politics was apparent as well as her interest in speculative fiction. She's written 40 books, essays, poetry.
Altogether a delightful evening.
Do you like Atwood? Have a favorite among her books? Leave a comment
2 comments:
How wonderful to have a chance to meet this author in person! I really enjoyed "Alias Grace" and "Cat's Eye" but did not like "The Handmaid's Tale," which I know you like. It was too scary for me, imagining that life and its treatment of women in a modern society.
North of the border, we have to like Atwood. It's unpatriotic to admit otherwise.
Jamie
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