Book Review (Lady Oracle)

In my holidays, I managed to finish Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle. Here is a picture of it in the grass besides my sun cream:

The book was a good and entertaining read. I enjoyed reading it. It is about a woman called Joan who has just faked her death and ran away from her life in Canada to Italy where her past haunts her and she hence spends some time thinking about her life in general and what had happened to her that lead to faking her death. It starts really captivating and continues to be funny and lovely and I like the main character as she is described as being a very interesting and likeable woman but in the end the story becomes a bit weird and it also ends with some kind of a cliffhanger because it is left to the reader to sort out the end properly. More specifically, it ends at some point where I personally would have wanted to know what happens next. I felt left alone in the chaos and in the end the incidents had been overturning. However, except for the last quarter of the book and especially the end I enjoyed reading this book and Margaret Atwood has done a great job in describing the life of Joan and her personality as well as her fears and her thoughts. She comes across very coherent and likeable and thanks to the great writing style of Margaret Atwood I was able to relate to her although we are very different from each other (but we also have made different experiences in life ;-)).


The book was on my To-Read wishlist for many years now (maybe 4 or 5, I don't know anymore) - actually, I even have lent it from the library here for 2 years now but somehow haven't managed to read it until recently. I didn't want to buy it myself because I read some reviews that it was not the best book of Margaret Atwood and now that I read it, I am glad that I read it (because I enjoyed it) but I agree with the opinion that Margaret Atwood has written better books. A couple of years ago, I have read her novel "Oryx and Crake" and I still remember it as a really great book. It absorbed my mind completely while I read it and it kept absorbing my mind even for weeks after having read it and I still remember how much it occupied my mind and how much I liked it. With Lady Oracle this happened only in the beginning a bit. Nevertheless, Lady Oracle is also a nice book and very readable - it's just not as good as Oryx and Crake. For me at least. Note however that Lady Oracle has been written in english and I have read it in German because german libraries unfortunately don't have many books in english and this one was only available in german. Hence, I cannot judge the language, unfortunately, as I only read it in a translation.

Did you read Lady Oracle? How did you like it?