Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983-2005 Book

I read some of these essays when the collection was initially published in 2005 or 2006, but for some reason, I didn't delve too deeply at that time. For some reason as yet unknown to me, I picked up the book again a couple of days ago and read my way straight through. Immersing myself in Atwood's prose is always like coming home to a good friend; her writing fits my brain patterns without a hitch.

Most of the pieces are previously published essays and reviews, and intermingled amongst those are some unpublished occasional essays, and some are so incidental as to seem more like gestures than essays, but all are, one way or another, substantial and, like all Atwood's work, both casual and critical at the same time. Most of the reviews are heavily slanted toward Canadian literature and literary history--the Can Lit dilettante should be aware that there are a host of, likely, new-to-you authors she refers to quite regularly (perhaps most often and most obliquely, Margaret Laurence, whom you really ought to check out if you haven't already. Something about the woman's writing reminds me of J. M. Coetzee at his best, it's so...unflinching.)

The essays are broken up by decade, more or less, and each section begins with an introduction that highlights both which books/collections she was working on and, interestingly, where she was in the world whilst writing them. I was interested to notice that my enjoyment of these pieces roughly coincided with my enjoyment of the novels she was working on/publishing during the same period. My favorite section coincided with the writing of Alias Grace; my least favorite, her most recent. Still, this reinvigorated my appetite for Can Lit, which I haven't indulged for a while; I've since ordered a new copy of What's Bred In the Bone (where do these books disappear to?) and begun reading Negotiating With the Dead, and I might even revisit some Margaret Laurence, to boot.