Book of Lives A Memoir of Sorts

<b>How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from the author of <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i> and <i>The Testaments,</i> one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures.<br></b><br> <i>'Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes. Though everything written must have passed through their minds, or mind, they are not the same.'</i><br> <br> Raised by ruggedly independent, scientifically minded parents - entomologist father, dietician mother - Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec. This childhood was unfettered and nomadic, sometimes isolated (on her eighth birthday: 'It sounds forlorn. It was forlorn. It gets more forlorn.'), but also thrilling and beautiful.<br> <br> From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel year that spawned <i>Cat's Eye</i> to the Orwellian 1980s Berlin where she wrote <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i>. In pages bursting with bohemian gatherings, her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and major political turning points, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood actors and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.<br> <br> As we travel with her along the course of her life, more and more is revealed about her writing, the connections between real life and art - and the workings of one of our greatest imaginations.