My Life In Books
ELLE Australia|July 2017

Margaret Atwood, the author of this month’s most buzzed about TV adaptation, The Handmaid’s Tale, shares the reads that have had the biggest impact on her life.

Margaret Atwood
My Life In Books

GIRLS GROWING UP

Anne Of Green Gables by LM Montgomery; Lives Of Girls And Women by Alice Munro

These books offer two views of girlhood, one with a positive outcome, the other more negative, but both with strong female friendships in common. I read the first Anne book when I was eight. I wasn’t much interested in the later books; I wanted to read about her life as an orphan made good and about her relationship with these severe grandparent figures. I already admired Munro for her first book, Dance Of The Happy Shades, when Lives Of Girls And Women came out in 1971. Anne never thinks about sex whereas Munro’s protagonist, Del Jordan, thinks about it a lot!

ANIMAL STORIES

The Tale Of Mr Tod by Beatrix Potter; Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton

This story is from the July 2017 edition of ELLE Australia.

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This story is from the July 2017 edition of ELLE Australia.

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