She rocks the curls, rocks the silver, and rocks my imagination.
As long as I have been writing this blog, I am shocked I have not featured my favorite author Margaret Atwood as a WAM while I have referenced her numerous times.
I was introduced to her writings in freshman English composition in college. It was the short story "Dancing Girls," which was the peculiar story of a Canadian grad student in America who, while a foreigner, was not considered "exotic enough" by her college, peers or her landlady, who had invited all her tenants to a party and encouraged them to wear their native costumes. The student, an introvert studying urban planning, was alienated from most aspects of her life and sought a connection to someone or something, wishing life was more Utopian, more exotic, like the dancing girls who attended a wild party next door.
I became a junkie for Atwood after that, consuming books like so many black coffees at a beat poetry reading. It is important to note that during my coming of age with Atwood I was in college and I read her for pleasure, after I studied. She was the anti-romance novel, a perfect antidote for finding the brittle humor in less than ideal breakups, scenarios for which I was becoming quite adept in my late teens/early twenties.
While her short stories were the perfect bed time reading and my favorite genre, her novels are what she is celebrated. My favorites are Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride and The Blind Assassin.
Cat's Eye is the story of a visual artist hosting a retrospective gallery show in her hometown of Toronto, and reliving her relationship with a childhood bully turned best friend.
The Robber Bride dealt with three women united around a common enemy, Zenia, and how each of the women were tormented by her and how they successfully vanquished her from their lives, like so many princess heroines in a fairy tale victorious over an evil queen.
The Blind Assassin is a story within a story, told in flashback, an old heiress recounting the story of the demise of her father's business, a forced marriage, a lost love, and her sister who was a victim in it all. Probably one of the most masterful pieces of storytelling I've ever read. Once I read it straight through, put it down, and picked it back up to read it again. I came thisclose to joining a book club just so I could discuss the book with someone.
All of this fandom came to a head for me when I went to the Fountain Street Church to hear her speak. Arriving later than I wanted, I was "punished" by being ushered to one of the few remaining seats available, in one of the front pews. Oh... my... God... they sat me right next to her, and she had to excuse herself to take her place at the front lectern.
She spoke lively of the indigenous people of Canada, and how she and her daughter went there to live for a few weeks to learn their ways, hear their stories. I recall her telling the story of the women chewing the rough hides from the hunt, a process for making the leather softer, more pliable to work with.
I was a total fangirl.
I attended the meet and greet afterward, standing in a long line that snaked through the reception where I was able to secure a few paltry refreshments: a grape here, a wedge of cheese there, a depressed pastry of some unknown origin. Her minions were efficient, instructing us to present no more than two books, and to have the book open to the page we wished her to sign. I had brought along Blind Assassin, a mint hardcover, and my old, battered Dancing Girls volume of short stories.
She looked weary, a slight woman in her 70s, curls beginning to droop for yes, she too is a curly girl. In my nervousness, I introduced myself and offered Blind Assassin opened to the title page but Dancing Girls slipped through my fingers and landed on the table, causing ripples in her water glass.
She picked up the cover of Dancing Girls, and stroked it lovingly, exclaiming "oh Melissa, you've been reading!" and lingered for a moment when I told her that was my first. She smiled, patted the book, patted my hand and thanked me for reading.
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