Margaret Atwood’s long-awaited memoir is a humble look at greatness

How did Margaret Atwood get to be so powerful?

Her new work, “A Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts,” is radiant with it — full, expansive and joyful.

Power is innate: You either have it, or you don’t. No one knows if it comes from nature or nurture, but Atwood’s memoir provides a deep dive into nurture, offering a wonderfully thorough examination of one writer’s life.

Atwood was born in 1939, in Ottawa, the second of three children. Carl, her father, was an entomologist; her mother, also Margaret, was a teacher and nutritionist. The family later moved to Toronto, where Atwood went to school and college. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 1961 and received a master’s degree from Harvard in 1962. She married Jim Polk, an American writer, in 1968, and they divorced in 1973. Subsequently she became the partner of the novelist Graeme Gibson, with whom she had a daughter, Jess. Their relationship was close and loving, and lasted until Graeme’s death in 2019.

Since Atwood published her first book — poetry — in 1961, she has never looked back. The list of her publications — more than 60 books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry — takes up two full pages at the end of the memoir. Twice she has won the Governor General’s Award and the Booker Prize, as well as nearly every other literary award you can think of, including the Arthur C. Clarke and the Franz Kafka.

One thing needed to produce such a rich body of work is that innate sense of power, the belief that you are up to the task. Also, humility and humor. Atwood writes about a lesson she learned in school: “During public appearances, any humiliation can be overcome unless you throw up or die.”

Atwood is curious about every idea she meets. She questions patriarchy, matriarchy, literary hierarchy, government, marriage, fashion, diet, economics, physics, the environment, the political right, the political left, you name it. How the world actually works: That’s her subject.

Most writers have self-imposed limits — if you’re a journalist, you usually don’t do poetry; if you’re a novelist, you probably don’t take on economics. If you’re a writer, you probably aren’t also an inventor. Atwood disagrees. She writes in every genre, and just before the 2008 recession she produced a nonfiction book about debt. She developed the LongPen, a remote-controlled device that allows authors to sign their books remotely.

This is Atwood’s first memoir, and she came to it with some hesitation. Note the subtitle, “A Memoir of Sorts.” Would she, Atwood wonders, be expected to write about “alcoholism, debauched parties, drug-taking, flagrant sexual transgressions, with the writing itself treated as a byproduct that had oozed or sprouted from the compost heap of my outrageous behavior?” She had no such stories to share. Upon further thought, Atwood decided the project might prove fruitful: “I could embark on a journey in search of my own authentic inner self, supposing there is such a thing. At the very least, I could examine the many images of myself that have materialized and then vanished over the years.”

Atwood’s childhood was full of what we now call agency. Her father was a field scientist, and her family spent the warm months in the northern forests, often under primitive conditions. Atwood notes that the old-world lifestyle of her paternal grandparents helped her to create the 19th-century details in her novel “Alias Grace.” Her mother was a diligent gardener, an intrepid housekeeper and an imaginative bedtime reader. The parents offered benign neglect; the children ran wild. It was an idyllic time.

But when Margaret was 8, the Atwoods moved to Toronto, where a bullying classmate made life a misery. This narrative informs Atwood’s most autobiographical novel, “Cat’s Eye” (1988). Elaine, the young protagonist, nearly dies of hypothermia after being treated cruelly by her supposed friends. The adults, half-aware, have done nothing to help. It is Elaine who finally realizes that she possesses the power to end her own misery.

The memoir provides the factual version, which closely follows the novel. Atwood writes: “I can remember clearly the moment when the bluff was called. I turned away from the route to and from school — a walk that had typically been employed by Sandra in thinking up new punishments for me — and went off to play with a different girl. ‘Come back here at once!’ the fatal three called out to me. But I didn’t come back, then or ever. I could ignore them. I could have a different life.”

It is a moment of liberation and triumph, in which Atwood claims her own power.

The theme of power reverberates throughout Atwood’s work. She explores this dynamic between genders, between members of the same gender, between the government and the individual. In “Cat’s Eye” and “The Robber Bride” (1993), she explores the way it works between women — the way power twines and curls, vanishes, resurfaces and reinvents itself. Power is central to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian novel about authoritarianism that has become, in part because of the television series based on it and because of current events, an important cultural and political touch point.

Atwood describes “The Handmaid’s Tale” and her other nonrealistic work as “speculative fiction” — that is, limited to technology and behavior that has precedent in reality or is within our grasp. In the novel, the proscriptions on women’s power come from both ancient and modern sources — the Bible or Nazi rule, for example. This makes the book both disturbingly familiar and eerily prescient.

Atwood’s life has been radically unproscribed, prolific and hearty. When she and Graeme shared an old farmhouse in the country, the list of vegetables she planted reads like the list of her publications — daunting in its length and inclusivity. Atwood taught, wrote, gardened, cooked, raised her daughter, ran the household, took on causes, wrote speeches, founded prizes, edited anthologies, presented radical ideas, watched birds (she and Graeme were supporters of the conservation group BirdLife) and was a political activist, supporting human rights and democratic ideals.

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: Go forth and create! Seize your power.