If I’d read this at another time I’d probably be harsher with the rating. It’s an easy book not to like, not to ‘get’. However, right now, the themes of facades and artifice really clicked with me. The stories we tell ourselves to muddle along.

It’s not an easy read, the characters aren’t likeable – but they work in context, I think. Normal people shown as unlikeable and petty. The main character loses her grip on sanity, utterly, and yet by the end she seems the most sane, really.

It’s short. You’ll likely loathe it, or go ‘oh. Right’.

I like a lot of Atwood’s book (esp The Blind Assassin), and I can see WHY I should appreciate this one, but it just didn’t work me me on lots of levels. Firstly, it’s simply too self-conscious – trying too hard to discuss various issues concerning madness, civillisation, identity blah, blah. Secondly, it’s too disjointed. I know that this is supposed to be representative of the protagonist’s failing sanity, but it just came out as a lot of old heavily-loaded gobbledegook. And thirdly, the characters were all unpalatable. I didn’t feel a shred of empathy for any of them. Again, this may have been deliberate, but I would have expected at least some shades of grey.

This one is going back to Oxfam this weekend.