The Edible Woman review
Jan. 13th, 2011 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearAfter reading a couple of excellent Margaret Atwood books in recent years, I decided to put her entire back catalogue on my BookMooch wishlist and they are the books that seem to be making themselves available most often.
The Edible Woman turns out to be about a woman who works for a market research company. Even though it was written in 1969, the portrayal of life at a market research firm is still entirely relevant to today. Things haven't changed much in that industry in the last 40 years! I found this aspect of the book extremely amusing, which added an extra layer to my enjoyment of the book.
The market research part is rather more of a plot device than a central theme, though. The book is actually more about finding your place in society, battling peer expectations, and dealing with relationship issues. To begin with, it comes across as an entirely ordinary story about a single woman getting engaged in the late 60s, which is not what I have come to expect from Atwood. Around the pg 60 mark, things start to get a little weirder, with the protagonist acting strangely for no apparent reason - but the part described in the blurb on the back (Marian gradually finding she can eat fewer and fewer kinds of things) doesn't come into effect until over half way through and even then isn't given much time or analysis.
Part two of the book suddenly switches from first person present tense to third person past tense, which really confused me, since it's still from Marian's point of view, so I couldn't see the purpose of the change at all. This is actually explained, but not until the very last few pages, which switch back to first person when the protagonist says, "Now that I was thinking of myself in the first person singular again..." It's an odd device, which makes you re-evaluate the central part of the story after it's over, and I'm not sure it entirely worked.
Unusually, I did like the stream of consciousness sections, where the narrative follows Marian's thought processes along bizarre flights of fancy, and I found the rather odd character of Duncan quite compelling, even if I didn't ever really understand what he was all about.
The parts I enjoyed most were the completely mundane side plots about Marian's friends, and I think Marian's story might have been more enjoyable if it hadn't been for the inclusion of the weirdness. Still, I guess everyone thinks weird thoughts and has strange phases, which potentially makes the portrayal of Marian actually more realistic than characters in more everyday stories.
Well written, a bit off-kilter, but generally good.
The Edible Woman turns out to be about a woman who works for a market research company. Even though it was written in 1969, the portrayal of life at a market research firm is still entirely relevant to today. Things haven't changed much in that industry in the last 40 years! I found this aspect of the book extremely amusing, which added an extra layer to my enjoyment of the book.
The market research part is rather more of a plot device than a central theme, though. The book is actually more about finding your place in society, battling peer expectations, and dealing with relationship issues. To begin with, it comes across as an entirely ordinary story about a single woman getting engaged in the late 60s, which is not what I have come to expect from Atwood. Around the pg 60 mark, things start to get a little weirder, with the protagonist acting strangely for no apparent reason - but the part described in the blurb on the back (Marian gradually finding she can eat fewer and fewer kinds of things) doesn't come into effect until over half way through and even then isn't given much time or analysis.
Part two of the book suddenly switches from first person present tense to third person past tense, which really confused me, since it's still from Marian's point of view, so I couldn't see the purpose of the change at all. This is actually explained, but not until the very last few pages, which switch back to first person when the protagonist says, "Now that I was thinking of myself in the first person singular again..." It's an odd device, which makes you re-evaluate the central part of the story after it's over, and I'm not sure it entirely worked.
Unusually, I did like the stream of consciousness sections, where the narrative follows Marian's thought processes along bizarre flights of fancy, and I found the rather odd character of Duncan quite compelling, even if I didn't ever really understand what he was all about.
The parts I enjoyed most were the completely mundane side plots about Marian's friends, and I think Marian's story might have been more enjoyable if it hadn't been for the inclusion of the weirdness. Still, I guess everyone thinks weird thoughts and has strange phases, which potentially makes the portrayal of Marian actually more realistic than characters in more everyday stories.
Well written, a bit off-kilter, but generally good.
