Has to be the most spectacular, hilarious, and generous autobiography of the last quarter century ... Embedded everywhere are canny quips, enigmatic writing tips ... [Her] ingeniousness and sly wit are evident ... It’s impossible to capture the breadth and richness of Atwood’s oeuvre and private life in the confines of a book review. Or to adequately represent her eerie, resplendent mashup of prophecy and humor.
[A] tour-de-force ... Might as well be one of Atwood’s novels (with the addition of photos and illustrations). It’s a remarkable read. She makes space for everyone. Her engaging voice is populated by a large cast of beguiling characters, settings are enriched with vivid details, all of it grounded by a compelling story line.
A venerable sort, a cradle-to-rocking-chair telling of a celebrated life ... My single complaint about this charming, interesting and witty 599-page book is that it feels a bit completist at times. There sure are a lot of houses, book deals, backstories and long quotations ... Scintillating portraits ... It's all here.
Radiant...full, expansive and joyful ... Atwood’s life has been radically unproscribed, prolific and hearty ... This memoir highlights Atwood’s energy, generosity, focus and vigor, as well as her Canadian modesty, self-deprecation and good cheer. If you’re an Atwood fan, you will love this book. If you’re a writer, it will offer a model of productivity.
A largely shapeless narrative spanning the entire life of Canada’s pre-eminent novelist, and it contains a good deal of passive voice ... It frequently reads like a Politburo speech, in the sense that it takes its audience for granted.
Charts the remarkable life story of one daring author who looks back on her career with awe and humility, realising how much living and influence she has indeed accomplished. In all, Atwood renders a captivating portrait of personal history, one ultimately enlivened by its wisdom on the art of fiction from one master storyteller.
A big fat juicy memoir, as compulsively readable as her best fiction ... Breathtakingly brutal in some passages, but also tartly funny. One of the most deliciously engaging memoirs of the decade, this brims over with life, wit and flashes of prophecy.
She strikes a good balance, focusing on her life away from the desk but including enough about the books to satisfy the keenest fan ... What do we not get in this book? Atwood acknowledges (after overhearing readers complaining) that her books have become very long, but doesn’t explore why. Perhaps it’s connected to the other missing element: there’s no sense of how she experiences writing a novel ... Atwood keeps us generously entertained, but the chapters grow shorter and there’s a shadow of mortality. The end of the book has a valedictory air.
Atwood revels in her horticultural and culinary activities with an eye for detail that makes these years feel like a reconnection with her forebears ... Above all, this memoir is the record of a phenomenal literary output; most chapters bear the title of one of Atwood’s books. Personal events are treated with brisk frankness ... [There's] unexpected bluntness. She is similarly direct about her difficult relationship with the novelist Margaret Laurence ... This lively, often humorous memoir is thrown off course by the triumph of The Handmaid’s Tale ... The anti-free-trade liberal nationalism that Atwood espoused for a quarter of a century, obscured in this memoir, is alien today ... The second half of Book of Lives diverts the reader’s attention to her relationship with Gibson ... The Atwood on display here, as incisive as ever as she approaches her eighty-sixth birthday, is more emotive, her wit riper and more forgiving ... Her accounts of Canadian literary polemics, by contrast, are not reliable.
Pacy and fascinating ... Atwood is a careful if gleeful score-settler, making her the best kind of memoirist ... Atwood understands that it is the petty delights of stone-cold vengeance, along with the major trials and tribulations, successes and heartbreaks that make up a life. She’s lived a good one, and she’s generous enough to share it.
What she has written is less a memoir than an autobiography, not a slice of life but the whole works, 85 years. Where most such backward looks are cosily triumphalist or anxiously self-justifying, hers is sharp, funny and engaging, a book you can warm to even if you’re not fully au fait...with her astonishing output.
Seems untouched by an editor. It’s almost 600 pages long, and meanders wildly ... Sheds light on the author’s morals and marriage – and offers some very niche gossip ... I would have preferred more whispers of the A-list kind.
The Canadian novelist’s memoir, Book of Lives, displays the wit, intelligence and complexity that marks her best work ... [A] fat and satisfying memoir.
Delightfully funny ... It sparkles with elegance, wit and grace ... Exquisitely captures moments small and monumental in equal measure, revealing one of our most brilliant storytellers at work.
Zestfully detailed ... Atwood has created a keystone source for biographers and scholars while delighting and enlightening readers curious about [her] life.
