Burning Questions is a canny title for Margaret Atwood’s new book of essays and occasional pieces. It reflects both the urgency of the issues dear to her...and their combustibility, the risk that in writing about them she might get burned ... Atwood...can still rile and inspire ... There aren’t always clear answers in Burning Questions; indeed, Atwood points out that essays are really just 'attempts' at answers ... You will probably be struck by how sensible and moderate Atwood is ... Readers’ enjoyment of Burning Questions may be proportional to the pleasure they take in Atwood’s cozy, twinkling tone. She can’t resist an amusing simile; she’s fond of appearing absent-minded; she’s self-effacing. This can become grating ... There’s sometimes condescension in it; in one essay, she adopts an alien persona to show 'earthlings' how to avoid totalitarianism — not cute ... Nevertheless, the book’s scope and the perspicacity of her writing evince the reading and thinking of a long life well lived. There are some good axioms worth repeating ... She writes about an astonishing array of things ... Range isn’t a problem ... But some pieces feel dashed off. She pads and digresses; what could be a sentence becomes a paragraph. Clumsy coinages feel like placeholder words ... This may be forgivable, or inevitable, given the demands on Atwood’s time ... This word limit permits only an outline of what makes Burning Questions both stimulating and frustrating. It’s certainly a dipper rather than a straight-through read. But it’s a foolish reader who fails to seek the flashes of brilliance and insight that glint amid the more workaday pieces.

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to collect their PEN International speeches between hard covers ... The amount these speeches have added to the sum of human dullness is incalculable ... This applies even to those who can clearly write and think, like Margaret Atwood ... In Atwood’s new book...there are so many such speeches, including a PEN talk, that they quickly capsize the boat, threatening to drown even the good material. The heart-sinking opening sentences start early, and they never entirely stop ... I kept reading. Hope springs eternal across a crowded table of contents. And there is some smart material and pawky wit in Burning Questions, even if they huddle, trembling, like ferns behind a waterfall ... In some of the essays here, Atwood recalls the gestation and reception of her best-known novels ... Some of the most memorable things in Burning Questions are simply stray comments that noodle their way into your mind ... Atwood, at 82, hardly seems ossified. She’s radiant on this book’s cover, and the best pieces here cast a certain glow as well. As for the speeches, I suppose during those you can, as at any conference, sneak out to the sidewalk for an illicit vape.

One of the most notable aspects of this collection is how engaged Atwood, now 82, has remained with the pressing issues of the day ... Atwood is clearly undaunted by opprobrium, calling instead for fairness and accountability ... It’s fascinating to read Atwood’s reflections on her own novels and their continued relevance, sometimes three or four decades after the fact, but equally striking to see how many pieces she has included here generously celebrating other writers.

She narrates her work, like a dressmaker with pins in her mouth chatting while she does a fitting. Sartor resarta ... [there is an] apparent ease with which she structures her nonfiction ... Atwood is conversant with a lengthy catalogue of writers, works and genres ... Her nonfiction—reviews, introductions, eulogies, appreciations and lectures—often seems to be a response to a challenge or an invitation ... [there is a] forthright way in which Atwood simultaneously states her purpose and engages her audience ... Atwood seems to have taken the most basic writing advice—say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you just said—and developed it into a highly flexible, personal art form ... Her nonfiction is not particularly nuanced—that non-outline she doesn’t make forms the exoskeleton of many a command performance—but her prescience, her wicked sense of humour, her generosity and her appetite for work are all on flamboyant display in Burning Questions.

As the world knows, Margaret Atwood’s cerebral imagination produces brilliantly realised writing in a manner never less than authoritative. No less authoritative is this volume, which shows her turn over a range of subjects like a thoughtful archaeologist thumbing a piece of ground, seeking clarity about virtually everything, from freedom to culture wars, to bird-watching, autocracy and feminism ... This volume will add to Atwood devotees’ existing book-stack, and readers will find satisfaction in her thoughts on the downfall of autocrats in the essay on the courageous Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski. She also reflects on fellow Canadian Alice Munro, on Hilary Mantel’s writing and, with some urgency, on the key conservationists Barry Lopez and Rachel Carson. Finally, a challenge to all of us, though specifically to Trinity College Dublin’s historical society, where she was once an invited guest: Tell. The. Truth.

Individual pieces cover a broad range of topics and forms, and with many, Atwood presents a mix of digression into autobiographical vignettes (counting bugs in the Canadian woods with her father, semi-disastrous forays into fashion, discovering Tarot, leaky roofs) with cultural critique (from Simone de Beauvoir and second wave feminism to the treatment of female students at Harvard), and then looping back to the stated topic again. A common refrain in these highly discursive pieces is, 'but I digress,' which, with any writer of lesser skill, would be annoying. But it’s not, she’s not. Because many of these pieces were written as lectures or speeches for various groups (students, lawyers, neurologists, nurses), we can hear Atwood’s voice leap off the page. Others written as book reviews and introductions for everyone from Bradbury to her own husband’s posthumous reissues, are just as vibrant because, of course, Atwood’s writing voice is both accessible and compelling: she invites you in, and you want to keep reading.

The collection is less selective than exhaustive. Despite the urgency evoked by its title, one gains few fresh revelations from these pieces ... Rather, reading them is more like attending a dinner party where a charming conversationalist holds court. Sometimes, she rambles and you find yourself wondering: What were we talking about again? But she is being so witty about it that you hardly mind. Most enjoyable are the excursions into her own writerly past.

Impressive ... Readers will...appreciate the insight into Atwood’s creative process ... Despite the oft-serious nature of the collection, there are welcome dashes of levity ... The result is a superior assembly of intellectual excursions.