Matt

The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged: and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.

Few characters in literary history have ever been introduced with such impact as Flora Poste, and fewer still manage to live up to that introduction for the length of the novel. But Flore Poste doesn't break a sweat, maintaining her poise in the face of everything the Starkadder family throws at her. Such an icon.

A book that I've always appreciated but couldn't say that I've enjoyed, the characters are all a bit too broken to want to connect with too deeply. I got a lot more out of this read after reading Atwood's memoirs though as it's clear that the story broadly maps on to her experience of starting a relationship with fellow author Graeme Gibson while his marriage to Shirley Gibson was slowly disintegrating.

Even with this newfound knowledge, I still came away from this re-read rooting for Elizabeth. She might be coldly calculating and deeply unhappy, but she's the only character who has at least a vague sense of what she wants and how to get it. Lesje and Nate are both shaped by circumstances, but by the time Lesje makes her fateful decision in the final chapters I really just wanted someone, ANYONE to talk some sense into her.

Short story collections are almost always a bit hit and miss, but at this stage of her career Margaret Atwood was simply incapable of missing. I'm not sure there's a single dud in the bunch, and there's a couple of absolute all timers (Betty, Under Glass and Hair Jewellery stand out) that have lived rent free in my head for decades now. The scope of each story varies a lot, with some capturing a single afternoon while others encompass the full sweep of a character's life, but all of them are beautifully human and heartbreaking.

A really fascinating book in a couple of different ways. As a point in time glimpse at a very different world, it's wonderful - the world building of fin de siècle rural France is perfect, with lots of rose-tinted details about what day-to-day life in a relatively prosperous rural backwater would have been like (including some fairly dark details thrown in as fun little asides). The vast difference between the Anglo and Gallic worldviews is also amazing to witness, the ways Claudine approaches the world couldn't be more different than something like the roughly contemporary Anne of Green Gables or What Katy Did At School. Equally fascinating is the story behind the books themselves, with Colette producing the books that appear to have been lightly edited by her husband and then published under his name. Her claims that his only contribution was to make them a bit more saucy feels true, with the authentically feminine perspective regularly undercut by a very masculine fantasy perspective of what nubile young schoolgirls and their teachers are really getting up to behind closed doors. And on top of all of this, there is the elephant in the room that Claudine might actually just be a selfish and awful person who enjoys creating chaos. Ultimately, a rich text and a fun read that didn't really leave me wanting to spend any more time with the lead character.

"It did make a mess; but then, I don't think I'll ever be a very tidy person" Joan Foster (aka Louisa K Delacourt) may not be the best known of Atwood's protagonists, but she may be the most chaotically fun. This sly humour that permeated Edible Woman but was entirely absent from Surfacing is back with a vengeance, and having a better sense of Atwood's life around this time thanks to her memoir makes characters like the dour husband Arthur and the hapless intellectual revolutionaries of Toronto seem even more delightfully bitchy. Lady Oracle feels a bit more intellectually lightweight than much of Atwood's later work, but Joan's story has a lot to say about the expectations placed on women and the need for separate identities that at some point will crash together.

I picked this up after after reading Margaret Atwood's Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature and while it's fascinating as a historical document, the endless tales of woe and the (to modern eyes) totally unsympathetic character of the author makes it a real slog. There's something so joyless about her retelling of her emigration and years in the Canadian bush, you can't help but sympathise with the many villains who come along and fleece her and her husband with alarming regularity.

As Margaret Atwood's second (published) novel, you can start to see more of the themes that would come to define her writing (Canadian-ness, sexual politics, reproductive rights, even conservationism) coalesce around the distinctive voice that was already present in The Edible Woman. It had been a while since I'd read this one, and this time I noticed how Atwood's poetic voice crosses over into her fiction here in a way that doesn't happen often during her career, particularly as the main character's mental state starts to fall apart once she comes to grips with the choices she made (or were made for her). The (intentional) void that is the main character means it's never going to be my favourite Atwood novel, but still a fascinating read that refuses to give you easy answers about what is next for the characters by the end.

Does exactly what it says on the tin, although my god, the sex scenes are excruciating to read...

Genuinely hard to believe that this was Margaret Atwood's first (published) novel. All the elements that would go on to make her such a distinctive voice are already in place, and it landed at the perfect time to capture the cultural zeitgeist of the nascent second wave feminist movement (even though Atwood herself notes it was written before that really landed, so can't really be considered a product of the movement).

The story of Marian MacAlpin who finds herself fighting a losing battle to meet the expectations of the moment is pretty straightforward, although the switch between first and third person perspectives is a fun authorial flourish that a more seasoned writer would probably discard but really works for this story. While a product of a specific moment in time, Marian's disintegration and symbolic rebirth still hits just as hard today, although as Atwood notes in the foreword it's not like her options are much better at the end of the story than at the beginning (which is very milennial coded, when you think about it). The supporting characters are uniformly fun and well drawn too, although long-time MVP Ainsley is probably aging the worst of the bunch due to <insert literally everything she does to and with Len>.

Absolutely unmissable if you're a fan of Margaret Atwood, right from the start her authorial voice comes through so strongly that it feels like catching up with an long-time friend who you don't see as much as you used to, but are delighted every time you bump into each other - especially since she's clearly not afraid to spill some messy gossip. The connections between her life and her work come through strongly and while her fiction never seems to be fully autobiographical, I'm looking forward to re-reading her work to see how different they feel with all this new knowledge. The sections focusing on Graeme Gibson's life are probably the least interesting if you're just here to get your Atwood fix, but the central role he played in her life eventually makes these diversions from her main story feel necessary to understanding her as a person. Ultimately left me feeling a bit melancholic as aging and death start to move from the periphery to the centre of the story - Margaret Atwood feels like a load bearing presence, and I'd much rather not think of a world without her in it.

Variable, like most collections of short stories, especially when most of them traverse much the same territory (key themes: masculinity, and the costs thereof; Wyoming, bad weather capital of the world; ranching, not a good business model; the importance of work health and safety compliance etc). Brokeback Mountain is the obvious standout, but don't sleep on A Lonely Coast as an excellent example of how a well crafted short story can pack more of a punch than most full length novels can manage. Those names though, there's only so many deranged cowboy names you can read before it starts to feel like a literary affectation that's only serving to take you out of the story...

Like most of Helen Garner's work, Monkey Grip is ultimately primarily about Helen Garner. Your mileage will vary on how fascinating you find Helen Garner, because Helen Garner certainly finds Helen Garner pretty fascinating. Did I mention Helen Garner?

Mostly doesn't work for me, I normally enjoy a story with unrepentantly self-involved characters but I completely bounced off this one. Despite this, it's a fascinating window back into a very particular moment in bohemian 1970s Australia which was enough to keep me going despite my growing frustration at literally everyone involved in the story.

I wanted to love this, but right from the outset it didn't land with me the way other works from Yoshimoto have. The sparsely elegant prose is still there, but somehow more clunky than in her later works (although this may have been a translation issue). I suspect it's the plot that really turned me off this one, the combination of the not-quite-but-let's-face-it-actually-yes incest-adjacent romance and the incredibly problematic relationship between the aunt and her underage student might be a product of the time in which the book was written, but land with such a catastrophic thud in this day and age that it makes it hard to invest in any of the characters.

Captures the Maeve Binchy magic from this era of her career, although the effect is diluted a bit due to the structure that leans on interweaving vignettes of the lives of the residents of Shancarrig. Some work better than others, but on balance it all hangs together and the better ones more than make up for the weaker entries.

An absolute time capsule of a book from the Bridget Jones's Diary era of British chick lit (complimentary). Is it good? Is that question even relevant? Marvel at the turn-of-the-millennium vibes that infect the entire thing, replete with plot points that would be immediately solved if smartphones existed. Light and fluffy, if occasionally infuriating since it relies on the heroine being incredibly dense on occasion. Samantha Grabster remains an icon for the ages however, and should have been the protagonist of a long running series.

A great corrective to the traditional focus on the identity of Jack the Ripper himself, rather than the women who suffered at his hands. Well researched if a bit speculative in parts on the motives of its protagonists, it presents a compelling glimpse into the lives of five disparate women and the societal forces that led them to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in the dark laneways of Whitechapel.

Possibly overshadowed by the (absolutely perfect) 1975 film adaptation, Picnic at Hanging Rock perfectly embodies the energy of the story that it's telling with its languid prose and creeping sense of hopeless dread. Lace and corsets won't get you far in the outback, and the extreme prejudice with which this ancient continent swallows the schoolgirls without a trace is both unsettling but familiar to those who live here. A product of its times in that it doesn't engage with the aboriginal occupants of the land and what they might make of all of this, but in some ways this almost makes the story more effective - there are people right there who might have averted this tragedy or be able to provide answers, but nobody would ever think to ask them.

Immensely entertaining, the short vignettes of Princess Margaret's real and imagined life do a great job of building a portrait of a woman who in many ways defied description. It's hard to feel sorry for the ultimate poor little rich girl, but by the end there's a real sense of tragedy for a woman who seemed desperately unhappy in the core of her being despite being afforded a life of wealth and luxury that few of us could imagine.

Atwood at the peak of her powers, some of the turns of phrase that she dashes off will take your breath away - "some days I look like a worn-out thirty-five, others like a sprightly fifty" has lived rent free in my head for a long time now. The startlingly clear lens through which she conveys the sly malevolence of young girls and how childhood traumas can ricochet through your life reflects the artistic style of the main character, and makes me wish I could get my hands on a Risley original. Loses a bit of steam as the protagonist ages and matures, but that's almost the point, isn't it? Life is long and catharsis is hard to come by, so maybe catching a plane out of town and never looking back is the best we can hope for.

Dense. Very, very dense. But beyond a doubt the definitive economic history of Nazi Germany, and an important corrective to the idea that fascism is anything close to an efficient or effective form of government. It's fascinating to watch (in what feels like real time, did I mention it's dense?) exactly how the German leadership kept all the balls in the air, and the horrific lengths they went to in order to buy a bit more time with which to do increasingly unspeakable things.