Margaret Atwood at Hay Festival

Margaret Atwood in Conversation with Gaby Wood

An hour and change down some very windy roads, my other half cursing and grumbling as we got stuck behind lorry after tractor after lorry, I made my way to the Hay Festival.  For the uninitiated, the Hay Festival is a book festival, although in recent years it has expanded.  It now resembles more of a book festival with TED talks interspersed, as lectures and talks are given on almost any subject.  They have a couple of headliners each year, and this year Margaret Atwood is the star attraction.

"Public Transport Advertising"

Seated in the large Tata Tent, the lights went down and Margaret Atwood appeared, alongside Gaby Wood, Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation.  As they settled, Wood started by asking where Atwood took her inspiration.

I have never seen Margaret Atwood interviewed, either on film or in person, and found myself holding my breath waiting for her first words:

(Gravelly Canadian accent, poker face) "Public transport advertising."

Blink.

The kind of advertising on trains and buses, she expanded, which, when she was young, were for brassieres, girdles, and so on.  The thrust of the message, Atwood explained, was that the bodies of women needed external structure to save them flopping to the floor like jellyfish.  In more recent years, she had noticed, toothpastes and perfumes and soap were all the rage.  "You smell," she bluntly pointed out.  

Atwood cited semiotics works on advertising as a reflection of media, public and administration opinion on what people need, focusing on the control and policing of bodies.  When you look at it like that, it doesn't seem so silly!

"Cannibalism"

As Wood talked Atwood through her formative years -- those leading up to her first publications and even earlier -- reference was made to The Edible Woman, a book which Wood thinks deserves re-visiting.

Atwood described an entrepreneurial spirit in her teens that led to her and a friend running a children's birthday party company.  One of the things they would do was a puppet show and, having only four hands for puppets, they were limited to Hansel and Gretel, The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood.


"They're all about cannibalism," she drawled, deadpan.  The audience stopped to consider.  A murmur of grudging agreement.

So Atwood's first published novel came from.  She had undergone one rejection at the age of 23 -- "My least favourite year" -- which she sees now as a blessing in disguise, but at the time left her, "very depressed".

Wood expressed surprise that this unusual novel, quite different from anything else being produced, particularly by female authors, at the time, had met with her publisher's approval.  "They'll publish whatever they think they can sell," Atwood explained.  The content doesn't matter so much as its commercial value, and McClelland and Stewart obviously thought it would sell.  This despite losing the manuscript, and enquiring with Atwood whether she had a novel two years later, on the publication of her first volume of poetry.

"Some books escape from the covers and take on different lives"

Conversation inevitably turned to The Handmaid's Tale.  Atwood's Monday evening interview had been purely on this 32 year old novel that is enjoying a new life as a Hulu produced television series.  Even before the TV series, women had designed and worn their own handmaid's robes to wear in protest, a symbol of the oppression of women.

When asked what she thought about the novel becoming such a sensation, Atwood replied, "Some books escape from the covers and take on different lives."  She told stories of The Handmaid's Tale's use in protest, and described how the election of President Trump had occurred part-way through the filming of the television series, upon which the director declared, "We're making a different show now."

Atwood's pride at the iconic nature of her work is clear, but she is keen also not to take full creative credit.  She has said in previous interviews that all of the atrocities in The Handmaid's Tale have already occurred somewhere in the world, and she spoke for some time about people she knew who had lived through Totalitarian administrations.  She also cited women who have been protesting patriarchal inequality as long as she has -- "Why am I still holding this placard?"

"What are you reading?"

And now for my single piece of actual journalism.  We came to questions from the audience, and my hand (as it generally does) went Hermione-like straight up in the air.  Questions I had planned in advance about The Handmaid's Tale and its longevity, had already been covered, so I fell back on my introvert's networking question:

"What are you reading at the moment?"

You have it here, ladies and gents, an exclusive to Alternative Mr Men!

Margaret Atwood is reading an as-yet unpublished book by Sarah Selecky on the 'women of a certain age' working on bodily perfection through the joys of yoga and veganism.  She has also recently finished Evie Wyld's All the Birds, Singing and highly recommended it, an opinion backed by Wood.  Wyld is now firmly on the to-read list!

"I hope you enjoy Wales!"

And so, the discussion ended and my other half and I hot-footed it to the bookshop to get some books signed.  Atwood is quite strict about the time she will spend signing books and giving only a signature, not a dedication.  My other half (who has never read any Atwood) stood in line with The Year of the Flood, the first Atwood novel I ever read, slightly stained and covered in cat fur.  I clutched Alias Grace, my favourite Atwood of those I've read so far.

I stepped up to the table to meet the woman herself, more excited than my partner had ever seen me and, as the picture will attest, beamed at her as she signed my book.  I repeated again and again in my head the thing I would say so I don't say anything stupid -- I may have blurted out something dumb to Sarah Waters, the first author I ever met, but that's another story.

My book was handed back, Atwood looking a little tired but smiling.  "I hope you enjoy Wales!" I beamed, before skipping off with my newly signed copy.