I read my first Margaret Atwood books in college in the mid-1980s—most memorably The Edible Woman, Bodily Harm, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Forty years later, in November 2025, I had the pleasure of listening to Atwood narrate Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, published in her eighty-fifth year. It felt like a full-circle moment.
I expected this memoir to include Atwood’s keen insights into events past and present, literary and otherwise, and I wasn’t disappointed. What I didn’t expect, but ended up being delighted by, were her family stories about growing up in Canada in the years before, during, and after World War II. They were personal, unique, and self-reflective, but also provided historical, cultural, and sociological context.
As one would expect, Atwood (1939- ) took her memoir-writing assignment seriously. Not content to limit her scope to just her own life, she describes her mother’s and father’s experiences growing up in rural Nova Scotia in the early 20th century, providing information on their parents and siblings, education, early jobs, and admirably egalitarian marriage. She characterizes her mother’s background as genteel-rural and her father’s as backwoods-rural, but notes that as adults “they could switch back and forth between country and city with hardly any effort…” (56).
Atwood then moves on to her own childhood, significant portions of which were spent in the Canadian wilderness where her entomologist father conducted field research. Atwood tells great stories about these early years, detailing not only what “roughing it” was like for the family, but also sharing the idiosyncratic ways she and her slightly older brother, Harold, entertained themselves (manufacturing “poison,” conducting mold-growing experiments, creating illustrated superhero stories, etc.).
Writerly pursuits begin to figure more prominently in Atwood’s life during her high school years, and she publishes her first book of poetry in 1961, the year she graduates from Victoria College at the University of Toronto. From this point on her trajectory is that of a writer and participant in Canada’s burgeoning literary and publishing scene, where she will eventually cross paths with her future life partner, Graeme Gibson.
Prior to Gibson’s official introduction into the narrative, in chapter twenty-four, however, Atwood inserts three “Graeme, The Prequel” chapters (19, 21, and 23) to fill readers in on what this significant person in her life “was getting up to before I knew him” (462). Reminiscent of how she handled her parents’ stories early on, Atwood begins with Gibson’s birth in 1934. She doesn’t just provide formative stories from his early life, though; she also includes background on his parents and grandparents.
I’m convinced it’s these biographical digressions, during which Atwood extends her narrative to include the stories of loved ones’ lives prior to their intersecting with her own, that make this memoir feel more expansive than one would typically expect. I also believe it is what leaves me feeling like I’ve read a really good case study about Canadian life in the 20th century!
“Every writer is at least two beings; the one who lives, and the one who writes,” Atwood states in her introduction. If true, I’d argue this memoir is largely about the Atwood who lives. Writing certainly features prominently—many chapters are named after the books Atwood was working on during the covered time periods; and when describing exploits and artifacts in her life she often mentions where they later show up in her writing—but I wouldn’t say the focus ever lingers for long on “the writing process.” Given my decades-long interest in Atwood, I think I would have loved this memoir even if it focused more exclusively on the craft of writing; but truly, I don’t think I could have loved any alternate version more than I love the one she wrote, with its focus on lives lived!
Atwood, Margaret. Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. Doubleday, 2025.
