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Jamie's Reviews > Lady Oracle
Lady Oracle
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** spoiler alert **
It seems many of the reviews of this book call it an embarrassment to Atwood's oeuvre--I'm really not sure why, as it's really quite an enjoyable read, if not the most "important" book Atwood's written. But then, as I continue to move through Atwood's body of work, I see her stuff split into two factions: you have the 'issue' novels, like Handmaid's Tale and Oryx & Crake and, to a lesser extent, Robber Bride and Cat's Eye; then there are the sort of 'throwaway' novels that have Atwood's wit and shrewd eye, but don't necessarily come across as politically motivated books. I would put Lady Oracle in this category, along with Edible Woman and perhaps some of her short stories. I'm looking forward to seeing where the next ones I'm plunging into (Alias Grace, and after, Blind Assassin) will go.
Lady Oracle focuses on Joan Foster, a secret writer of costume gothics and a woman who fakes her own death in order to get away from the tangled web she's woven around her life. There's really not much more to the plot than that, but then, Atwood's work is very rarely plot-centered. The book is definitely a page-turner--I managed to get through it in three days, and that was during exams! Her style by this novel was really gaining force; I saw many echoes from her first novel, Edible Woman, in this one, particularly in terms of her dealings with eating disorders and the psychic-splitting of the self in women under a patriarchal order. In these themes, I certainly think Atwood's motive was political, and she handles them far better in "LO" than in "EW." While a lot of reviewers say Joan Foster is a self-pitying wuss, I actually felt she managed to gain a great deal of agency through the text, though of course her obsession with the gothic romance narrative seems problematic on the surface. But as with most Atwood protagonists, their split selves result from the sort of overarching cultural scripts that are forced upon us--so here, it's the gothic romantic ideals of love; in EW and Robber Bride, it's the fairy tale narrative; so on and so forth. So with Atwood, I typically think if something is coming off as problematic, it's worth a closer look on a large scale level.
Anyhow, I loved Lady Oracle. It's a quick read, Joan's fat childhood is both hilarious and emotionally potent (and the Royal Porcupine--another Duncan figure--is so well-done), and the writing is of course superb. Definitely worth it, especially over the holiday season as a sort of pleasant, relaxed read.
Lady Oracle focuses on Joan Foster, a secret writer of costume gothics and a woman who fakes her own death in order to get away from the tangled web she's woven around her life. There's really not much more to the plot than that, but then, Atwood's work is very rarely plot-centered. The book is definitely a page-turner--I managed to get through it in three days, and that was during exams! Her style by this novel was really gaining force; I saw many echoes from her first novel, Edible Woman, in this one, particularly in terms of her dealings with eating disorders and the psychic-splitting of the self in women under a patriarchal order. In these themes, I certainly think Atwood's motive was political, and she handles them far better in "LO" than in "EW." While a lot of reviewers say Joan Foster is a self-pitying wuss, I actually felt she managed to gain a great deal of agency through the text, though of course her obsession with the gothic romance narrative seems problematic on the surface. But as with most Atwood protagonists, their split selves result from the sort of overarching cultural scripts that are forced upon us--so here, it's the gothic romantic ideals of love; in EW and Robber Bride, it's the fairy tale narrative; so on and so forth. So with Atwood, I typically think if something is coming off as problematic, it's worth a closer look on a large scale level.
Anyhow, I loved Lady Oracle. It's a quick read, Joan's fat childhood is both hilarious and emotionally potent (and the Royal Porcupine--another Duncan figure--is so well-done), and the writing is of course superb. Definitely worth it, especially over the holiday season as a sort of pleasant, relaxed read.
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Reading Progress
May 4, 2008
– Shelved
July 3, 2008
– Shelved as:
thesis
Started Reading
December 14, 2008
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Finished Reading
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Moira
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rated it 4 stars
Jul 21, 2010 12:09PM
I loved this one! I should dig up my own review, too - people think it's fluffy, really?
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Argh, goodreads never sends me updates anymore, so now I only get comments and whatnot if I happen across them in the newsfeed.That was my sense of the response to Lady Oracle, both critical and more generally--at least inasmuch as her early work is often not held up with the same esteem as are her later novels (Alias Grace, Handmaid's Tale, Blind Assassin, etc.), perhaps because the early work is less 'issue based,' if that makes sense. There's less...agenda, as much as I resist that word to describe Atwood...and so it seems like people tend to find these somehow less 'serious.' Not to mention, I think a lot of critics misread the 'paralysis' of characters like Marian in The Edible Woman or Joan here as weakness, or sorrow-wallowing. I may re-read this one soon--I really enjoyed it at the time, but I've already forgotten so much...
GoodReads is fucking me over wrt comments too! wtf? And the feed doesn't work so hot anymore, either. Argh.That was my sense of the response to Lady Oracle, both critical and more generally--at least inasmuch as her early work is often not held up with the same esteem as are her later novels (Alias Grace, Handmaid's Tale, Blind Assassin, etc.), perhaps because the early work is less 'issue based,' if that makes sense. There's less...agenda, as much as I resist that word to describe Atwood...and so it seems like people tend to find these somehow less 'serious.' Not to mention, I think a lot of critics misread the 'paralysis' of characters like Marian in The Edible Woman or Joan here as weakness
YEAH, I think that's really true....altho nobody liked
It's also interesting to me how her v late 'environmental' novels have gotten more attention and respect than the earlier more straight-up feminist ones, altho that might be a result of her having had such a long career with a lot of critical acclaim. I still remember back in the eighties she was sort of thought of as One Of Those Feminist Writers (feminists were seen as dangerous in those days. Now the right knows better //isnotbitter).
Are you not receiving your GR notifications, either? I used to get emails--for group digests, friend requests, comments, &co--but haven't for a couple of months now. Only recently realized this--I wonder if contacting them will do any good, because it's robbed me of one of my favorite bits about the site--dialogue with other people on here.At any rate, Bodily Harm, Life Before Man, and Surfacing are now the only Atwood novels I haven't read (oh, and I guess The Penelopiad), so I can't speak to those, but I hardly find Offred (is June her real name? How have I never caught that?) to be a 'wimp.' I think the circumstances she's trapped in shift the parameters of 'heroism'--it's a scenario where simply making it through the day seems to be brave. In fact, I recently got my first tattoo, taken from that novel ("Nolite te bastardes carborundorum"), because I find that moment to be a stunning representation of rebellion, which maybe wouldn't necessarily seem all that courageous. But even to hold onto a phrase & a fantasy that has no tangible meaning to her--until the Commander tells her--as a way of survival seems particularly poignant to me.
I've likewise been fascinated by the Atwood-feminism intersection since first reading her; namely, because she's been raised up as a feminist author despite her very open and explicit aversion to the identification, but also because it seems to place her in a very particular niche in criticism. Most of the people in my grad program, for instance, haven't read Atwood (with the exception of my firecracker feminist partner-in-crime), and many seem to consider her more of a 'pop' author than a 'serious' one, which has always confused me. Accessibility =/= Stephenie Meyer-style literary value.
And why O&C and YOTF have gotten such pointed attention from the press startles me, too. I thought YOTF was an incredible novel; maybe one of her best. But O&C sometimes feels like a novel someone else wrote, as if she was finding her footing for YOTF, but hadn't quite inhabited it. I love O&C, I just think it's a bit anomalous in her oeuvre--but then, as you say, maybe that's in fact why critics have taken such a shine to it. Well, not to mention, both of them are very much of-the-time, particularly with waves and waves of people generally uninterested in environmental politics suddenly calling themselves "green" and waving a flag around.
