Launch for Margaret Atwood Reading Month: November 2025 #MARM2025

In a 1990 interview* MA talks about writing The Edible Woman in a chaotic Vancouver apartment: papers strewn everywhere, piles only she could decipher, and very little furniture (including a card table loaned by Jane Rule). Not how you’d imagine writers working (chair, desk), she says.

It was a “frenzy”, a “shambles”—with the draft of a novel in unused university exam booklets. She scribbled poems hastily, not even on the lines. “That tells what an optimist I am,” she says: “I start at the left and I slant up.”

More recently, I’ve heard MA say she doesn’t consider herself either an optimist or a pessimist—but a realist.

This reminds me of a Linda Finck TNY cartoon of a handmaid’s garment (February 2025), about coping strategies: “You’ve always wanted to live in a novel—and a Margaret Atwood novel is still a novel.”

I’m meant to be reading The Blind Assassin, Paper Boat, and OBitW, but lately I’ve been thinking about rereading The Handmaid’s Tale.

Which took me to a 1986 interview** where MA talks about writing it:

“When I first started thinking about it, I thought it was such a whacko idea I wrote it with some trepidation. It could have been the worst failure you could possibly imagine. I was afraid people would say it was stupid, silly. There was also the risk it would be thought feminist propaganda of the most outrageous kind, which was not really what I intended. I was more interested in totalitarian systems, an interest I’ve had for a long time. I used to read Second World War stuff in the cellar when I was twelve or thirteen, for instance.”

MARM 2025 PLANS

Launch (November 1)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Death by Clamshell” (November 4)
The Blind Assassin Parts I-IV (November 6)
Week Two: Update and Check-In (November 8)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Freeforall” (November 11)
The Blind Assassin Parts V-VI (November 13)
Week Three: Update and Check-In (November 15)
Margaret Atwood’s 86^th Birthday (November 18)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Metepsychosis” (November 18)
The Blind Assassin Parts VII-IX (November 20)
Week Four: Update and Check-In (November 22)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Airborne: A Symposium” (November 25)
The Blind Assassin Parts X-XV (November 27)
Wrap-Up (November 30)

Books in the cellar: why weren’t they stored on the upper floors? This was a Thing for older generations in my experience too. Sometimes because cellars were the domain of men (except for laundry, which eventually moved up) so there were books on both floors, but only certain kinds (women’s books in “spare” bedrooms left behind by children now-grown, but the men’s books below). Sometimes because books were viewed as clutter so none were visible (they were crammed out-of-sight…likely a working-class phenomenon: an upper/lower cupboard rather than a library.

Looking back to the earlier days of MA’s career—also looking ahead to her memoir—interests me. We can all see how it turned out, how it exists today, but what did it look like along-the-way. Would we ever have imagined a borrowed folding table? That interview was 35 years ago: maybe even she’s forgotten all that. (Presumably she returned the table! Perhaps the memoir will clarify.) But certainly her interest in totalitarian systems remains. And I suspect that she herself has some books in the cellar.

Looking back, looking ahead: what are you reading with MARM in mind?

As mentioned in the reminder, this year’s MARM posts will be only about 500 words. And, when it comes to The Blind Assassin, I’ll include a discussion question for those who haven’t read it (recently/ever), so that everyone feels included.

Housekeeping Note: I’m missing some participants’ links on the MARM project page. At some point, I must have overwritten an earlier draft and lost some records. /hanginghead If you recall reading anything for MARM that’s not linked on the project page, let me know, and I’ll fill the gap. Apologies!

*Eleanor Wachtel Writers & Company (1993)
**Geoff Hancock Canadian Writers at Work (1987)