Review: In “Burning Questions,” Margaret Atwood ponders an astonishing array of subjects
Read them and you will probably be struck by how sensible and moderate Atwood is. To criticize our “fantasies of endlessness” as climate change becomes ever more visible is scarcely controversial. To argue that “the hard-won rights for women and girls that many of us now take for granted could be snatched away at any moment” seems incontestable after the passage of the “Texas Heartbeat Act.
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ has been feared, banned and loved. Now it’s scaring the bejeezus out of us again. 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. Anyone who’s won as many prizes and sold as many books as Atwood runs the risk of false modesty calling themselves “a mere scribbler … a ferreter into matters about which I don’t know very much.
This may be forgivable, or inevitable, given the demands on Atwood’s time. In a humorous short essay titled “A Writing Life,” she lists things that have recently made it difficult for her to write, by the end of which one realizes that the whole article is a smokescreen for its own execution. By her testimony, she’s averaged 40 pieces a year for the past two decades, which means the 65 selected here were chosen from more than 700 candidates.
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