Helpful Score: 6
This book is difficult to read.
Alright, maybe you have to be extremely sophisticated to understand this book. Or maybe I just wasn't up to the task. I adore Atwood's work, largely speaking. I love the play on gender issues, the windows onto the character's personal worlds, the suspense and tension Atwood can introduce and tease into page-turners... But this book? Maybe it's because it spent so much time developing a "politics" sub-plot, or because it took place on an island that was difficult for me to render inside my head... but I just never understood what was going on. Never exactly understood, never could get "connected" enough with anything to care. That's so weird, since I get completely wrapped up in her other stories and novels, and I've read them all. I don't want to give this book a thumbs down, for fear that it's my own lack of skill *as a reader* that made the book so opaque and boring... but at least this review might give you some information pertaining to the apparent difference in this work from Atwood's others, you know?
Alright, maybe you have to be extremely sophisticated to understand this book. Or maybe I just wasn't up to the task. I adore Atwood's work, largely speaking. I love the play on gender issues, the windows onto the character's personal worlds, the suspense and tension Atwood can introduce and tease into page-turners... But this book? Maybe it's because it spent so much time developing a "politics" sub-plot, or because it took place on an island that was difficult for me to render inside my head... but I just never understood what was going on. Never exactly understood, never could get "connected" enough with anything to care. That's so weird, since I get completely wrapped up in her other stories and novels, and I've read them all. I don't want to give this book a thumbs down, for fear that it's my own lack of skill *as a reader* that made the book so opaque and boring... but at least this review might give you some information pertaining to the apparent difference in this work from Atwood's others, you know?
Helpful Score: 2
Meh. I usually really enjoy Margaret Atwood's books, but this one didn't quite do it for me. It wasn't weird, didn't make me think too much about the social structure, and I didn't really connect with any of the characters.
As Atwood is my favorite author, I was not impressed by this book. It had a heavy political background that I could not get into.
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Note: this has a bookcrossing.com sticker in the cover.
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Note: this has a bookcrossing.com sticker in the cover.
Reeling from breast cancer surgery and the end of a relationship, a magazine writer heads off to the Caribbean for a working vacation, and ends up entangled in a scary banana-republic coup. Atwood takes what could have been a typical romance novel set-up and makes it something very different.
This ISBN is the paperback version.
The story of Rennie Wilford, a young journalist whose life has begun to shatter around the edges. Rennie flies to the Caribbean to recuperate, and on the tiny island of St. Antoine, she is confronted by a world where her rules for survival no longer apply. By turns comic, satiric, relentless, and terrifying, Margarat Atwood's new novel is ultimately an exploration of the lust for power both sexual and political, and the need for compassion that goes beyond what we ordinarily mean by love.
The story of Rennie Wilford, a young journalist whose life has begun to shatter around the edges. Rennie flies to the Caribbean to recuperate, and on the tiny island of St. Antoine, she is confronted by a world where her rules for survival no longer apply. By turns comic, satiric, relentless, and terrifying, Margarat Atwood's new novel is ultimately an exploration of the lust for power both sexual and political, and the need for compassion that goes beyond what we ordinarily mean by love.
A Margaret Atwood classic about romance and adventure.
Good book but far from the best by Margaret Atwood.
One of Margaret Atwood's earlier efforts, and not my favorite, but an interesting read if you ever want to rough it in the Canadian north.
