HuffPo's Appreciation of Margaret Atwood

Why is Margaret Atwood such an impressive author? Dave Astor at The Huffington Post counts the reasons why Atwood’s books continue to resonate.

Astor rightly concludes that no appreciation of Atwood would be complete without an example of her wonderful prose and goes on to quote from the story “Hairball,” which appeared in her 1991 collection Wilderness Tips. Atwood describes her character’s name this way:

“During her childhood, she was a romanticized Katherine, dressed by her misty-eyed, fussy mother in dresses that looked like ruffled pillowcases. By high school she’d shed the frills and emerged as bouncy, round-faced Kathy, with gleaming freshly washed hair and enviable teeth, eager to please and no more interesting than a health-food ad. At university she was Kath, blunt and no-bullshit in her Take-Back-the-Night jeans and checked shirt and her bricklayer-style striped-denim peaked hat. When she ran away to England, she sliced herself down to Kat. It was economical, street feline, and pointed as a nail.”

Atwood’s next book, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, is available for pre-order.