zlacker

I gave a book of her poetry (Penelopiad) to a friend of mine, a talented poet herself. She said it made her angry: this was what she'd been aiming for her whole life, and Atwood made it look easy.

I'm glad that Handmaid's Tale has brought her to a wider audience. It would be easy for her to be shunted into "genre fiction" for that book, or into "chick lit" for most of her other novels. But she's one of the most gifted prose stylists I've ever read. Her nonfiction book Payback, about debt, is actually quite insightful as well -- it came out at the heart of the financial crisis, but was developed before it began and is a very astute criticism of the entire financial system.

>>jfenge+(OP)
I'll have to read payback, I was unfamiliar with it, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I have to say, though, this comment seems an odd mix of praising Atwood and seriously underestimating the scale and longevity of her fame and international regard. Like yes, her standard fiction novels are written by a woman and have female main characters, but nearly all of them were nominated for major international literary awards and many of them won - I don’t think any would qualify as “chick lit”, unless you’re taking the extremely broad stance of putting any novel written from a female perspective under that umbrella.

And assuming that your poet friend was unfamiliar with Atwood seems bizarre to me - I’m not a poet or in a literary field at all, but I was under the impression that she is one of the most well-known living poets (as a poet, not only a novelist), it’s just that poets/poetry don’t tend to be that well known in general.

>>magnet+hu
She is well known in literary circles, but I didn't think of her as a household name. My friend the poet knew her from Handmaid's Tale, but her poetry was less well known. (There are so many poets that even people who read a lot of poetry can easily miss a great one.)