Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Atwood can do it all: poetry, literary fiction, speculative fiction, and this novel, which is historical fiction. She picked the complex and confused story of a murderess in mid nineteenth century Canada. She kept the facts, so having a story that is conflicting and complex makes her novel that much more rich. And she does a great job with it - I can't imagine how much research she had to do to write this novel. What I like best is that the final decision about Grace is left up to the reader. Highly recommended.

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

This novel could be subtitled "The Secret Life of Girls." Atwood states the work is about how girlhood traumas continue into adult life. My question is, how did she remember so much from her childhood? Or did she observe children while writing this? She also stated this novel had the most autobiographical elements of all her novels. It does share some common details with "Surfacing", one of her earliest novels: the girl that spends her summers in the North woods, that has difficulty relating to other girls during the school year.

The novel is excellent, and very convincing. Highly recommended.

Agent Pitch at Atlanta Writer's Club

Why do I put myself through these things? Hours of waiting and preparation for five minutes of uncomfortable face time with a literary agent. I got rejected twice, for both novels. Here are the things that I did wrong:

For the first agent, we were allowed to submit twenty pages in advance. As soon as I sat down in front of him, he complained about the fact that I did not include a summary or synopsis. Well, I had followed the guidelines exactly, which limited us to a log line, a short bio, and the twenty pages - no mention of a summary. As a result, the agent had an incorrect idea of my novel. Next time (if I am ever masochistic enough to do this again) I will include a summary regardless of what the guidelines say. This is actually the second time this has happened to me. At the SCWW pitch, I stuck to the rules and included a one-page summary only to be told by the agent that she wished I had written a longer summary! But this agent was very nice, very helpful with his comments, based on the incomplete information that he had.

The second agent was a cold pitch, and I talked about my first novel. I described it as young adult, because a previous agent (who read the whole novel and rejected it) had advised me to pitch it that way instead of how I perceived it - literary fiction. Well, this agent fixated on my choice of genre and informed me my novel was not young adult, but probably literary fiction, exactly the opposite. I did not have time to explain my predicament to her. So I should have stuck to what I thought was right from the beginning.

Needless to say, it was not a good day for me. I decided not to think about it for a day, which didn't work of course - I spent a sleepless night. But the more time that passes the more I am able to assess the two disastrous pitches and learn something.

I realize I do not pitch well, especially a cold pitch. Reducing my novels to just a few words is difficult, and I always seem to pick the wrong ones - I think I am too easily swayed by what other people tell me, what I hear in round-table discussions, what I read in articles and books. I know my first novel is about loss, and yet I pitched it as a coming of age story. I know my second novel is about love, and yet the agent got the idea it was about caring for an aging parent

I think the best advice I can give myself is to avoid cold pitches. If I get another chance to submit pages then I can at least impress them, and I have never failed to get compliments on my writing. Stick to what I know is correct about my own novels, and try not to be swayed by what other people tell me.

Valentines by Ted Kooser

For years Kooser carried on a Valentine's day tradition. He mailed a short poem on a postcard to women that he knew, an annual event that grew over the years. This book is a compilation of those valentine cards.

Far from maudlin or sentimental, the topics are varied and always interesting. Highly recommended.

The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser

I love Kooser's poetry - it's so clear and understandable, as well as meaningful to me. So when I saw this book on a recommended list at poets.org I rushed out and bought it. Just like his poetry, his advice about writing poetry is clear and understandable.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

An excellent work of speculative fiction by an author who has demonstrated her skill in many genres, including poetry. This is a dystopia, or a utopia gone horribly wrong. The portrait of a misogynistic society where women are property, treated as mere wombs and the source of original sin. Picture radical Islam mixed with Old Testament Jewish law as interpreted by power-hungry pseudo-Christians that form a theocracy and you have the general idea.

The narrator is a "handmaid", as in the handmaid of Rachel. When Rachel could not bear Jacob a child, she offered her handmaid to her husband and then raised the resulting child as her own. Atwood takes these ideas to their extremes, imaging a plausible, if twisted society. Couple that with her excellent writing skills and you have an excellent novel that touches the reader in a number of ways.

SPOILER WARNING

As a writer myself, the ending is interesting. I suspected, having read other Atwood novels, that the ending would not be straightforward. Some readers might want revenge, violence, an end to the horrors of the society, a catharsis or healing of some kind, but none of these things happen. It's an ambiguous ending, in which we do not know if the handmaid is rescued or not. We suspect that she is, but can't be sure. There is certainly no revenge, no payback, and no interruption in the society. After the narration ends, there is an epilogue, in the form of a transcript from a scholarly conference that occurs a century or so after the events in the novel, in which a speaker discusses the discovery and authenticity of the narration we have just finished reading. Once again there are no hard facts presented, just the impression that the narrator escaped to record her story - but there are no details supplied about the fate of the society.

Not sure how I feel about the epilogue. Was it really needed? I'm fine with the ending of the narration, as ambiguous as it is, and I guess Atwood felt that something else was needed to help the reader resolve the story. Maybe that in itself is an admission that the ending of the narration is not satisfying by itself.

I highly recommend this novel - it's thought provoking and well written.

Negotiating With the Dead - A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood

An interesting book on writing that will really get you thinking. It's not a writing manual, and not a prescription for success or failure. Atwood doesn't answer any questions, but she poses plenty - and they are real head scratchers. This is education at its best, forcing the student to think for themselves.

And it's so impressive to see how many poets and writers Atwood quotes. She provides the reader with plenty of examples to illustrate her questions.