Volume LIII Number 5
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Books
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, by Margaret Atwood
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth,
by Margaret Atwood;
Bloomsbury, 2008, $29.95.
Margaret Atwood delivered the 2008 Massey Lectures last November, and they were published just as the current global financial crisis was unfolding, although her timely yet timeless subject would have been conceived long before the crisis.
Atwood has been at the vanguard for a long time now. She’s been writing since the 1950s. She’s always been good but the later part of her career has been dedicated to pushing the boundaries of her personal achievements. Once she got The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) out of her system, and put the female-as-victim theme behind her, she entered her literary maturity. Once she embraced the creative potential of the female-as-oppressor, with an equal claim on human evil as the male, she began turning out a body of fiction, coincident with her middle age, in which each new work was unlike any of its predecessors.
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