A review by gorecki
Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood
3.0
I finished Lady Oracle over a weekend, without being able to put it down. And yet, once I’d finished it, I was left having mixed feelings about it.
Lady Oracle started off strong, with the first paragraph grabbing my attention immediately. After only a few sentences I knew I want to dedicate my full attention to the book and read it until my eyes hurt. The narration was full of Atwood’s usual poignant insights on the human heart and behavior. You can see the main character’s, Joan’s, complicated personality grow into something wild and intense as a result of bad parenting, bullying at school, and fighting with obesity and being overlooked. Atwood’s observations and understanding were so strong, that I couldn’t help but feel I’m reading something very personal and multilayered. It sometimes even brought back memories from my own past, and gave me the opportunity to look back at them from another perspective.
But somewhere in Part Four of the book, something went wrong. The story started meandering into directions I was not very fond of – Canadian nationalists, communists, dynamite, enemies leaving dead animal’s corpses on doorsteps… Suddenly there was so much happening, so many unrealistic events making Joan look paranoid, but yet strangely absent-minded and detached at the same time, that I lost that fascination I had in the beginning of the book. I did not understand why half of the things happened or how they related to the story, nor did I feel they received any closure in the end of the book. While I felt Joan had turned into an unreliable narrator, partly living in the romantic gothic novels she writes for a living, there were still actual events happening around her that showed she was not all that unreliable. Still, these events did not receive any actual ending. From something serious and insightful, this book became a comedy very much verging on the absurd.
I love Atwood. Always have, always will. Even though Lady Oracle did not become a favorite of mine, I still believe that despite the strangeness of the second half of this book, the first half of it was simply incredible.
Lady Oracle started off strong, with the first paragraph grabbing my attention immediately. After only a few sentences I knew I want to dedicate my full attention to the book and read it until my eyes hurt. The narration was full of Atwood’s usual poignant insights on the human heart and behavior. You can see the main character’s, Joan’s, complicated personality grow into something wild and intense as a result of bad parenting, bullying at school, and fighting with obesity and being overlooked. Atwood’s observations and understanding were so strong, that I couldn’t help but feel I’m reading something very personal and multilayered. It sometimes even brought back memories from my own past, and gave me the opportunity to look back at them from another perspective.
But somewhere in Part Four of the book, something went wrong. The story started meandering into directions I was not very fond of – Canadian nationalists, communists, dynamite, enemies leaving dead animal’s corpses on doorsteps… Suddenly there was so much happening, so many unrealistic events making Joan look paranoid, but yet strangely absent-minded and detached at the same time, that I lost that fascination I had in the beginning of the book. I did not understand why half of the things happened or how they related to the story, nor did I feel they received any closure in the end of the book. While I felt Joan had turned into an unreliable narrator, partly living in the romantic gothic novels she writes for a living, there were still actual events happening around her that showed she was not all that unreliable. Still, these events did not receive any actual ending. From something serious and insightful, this book became a comedy very much verging on the absurd.
I love Atwood. Always have, always will. Even though Lady Oracle did not become a favorite of mine, I still believe that despite the strangeness of the second half of this book, the first half of it was simply incredible.