A Heather Mallick review of a Margaret Atwood book?

And you read it?

Why? Why do that do yourself?

Margaret Atwood and Heather Mallick have now become self-proclaimed scientific experts. Isn't that one of the signs of The End of the World?!?

I got as a far as the first two sentences. I couldn't go on.
I don't kow why anyone has anything against "grandeur". It's a perfectly cromulant word that embiggens us all.
Heather Mallick is just the person to inflate the totally irrelevant Margaret Atwood. Will someone please tell Mrs. Atwood her novels suck?
Sarah Palin's new book will come out in Novermber. Just in time for Christmas.

I have to confess that I did start to read that review yesterday, however I quickly realized that it was not intended for me.
Clearly Heather Mallick can write in tongues.

"Cromulant", Kinyobe-san? Are you watching the screens in downtown elevators again?

I'll read Atwood's novel right after I see Moore's latest flick,then I'll lobotomize the other side.

Encana makes me proud to be a Canadian, Atwood makes me ashamed. Heather Mallick just makes me want to puke.

The real tragedy is that you can bet that atwoods book will be taught to innocent English arts under grads.

I saw the names Heather Mallick and Margaret Atwood on the link, I said to myself NO FRICKIN WAY....

Next.

What's wrong with the word "cromulant"?
If Canadian schools want to teach Can-Lit, first teach the kids how to read and then teach them to be discriminating in their taste. Hopefully, they can see through blowhards like Atwood and read something else.

But there's a resigned air to The Year of the Flood, partly because so many of the predictions of so many writers — Atwood included — over the decades have come true. And yet, what good did their warnings do?

... Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949; anti-abortionists and anti-sexers are marching about North America this fall like something out of The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood's novel from 1985.

Yes, Orwell didn't fight in the Spanish Civil War nor did he recount the communist fratricide that he witnessed in a novel called Homage To Catalonia, so really he made that Animal Farm stuff up out of nothing.

Similarly, abortion wasn't an issue prior to 1985.

By the way, Atwood was a big backer of Toronto Mayor David Miller. As if she needed another reason to be known as a dolt.

USGS reports 7.9 magnitude earthquake off Samoa

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hjBHbM7RQ0WrAduohyfkh7oc_VbA

Osumashi Kinyobe, cromulent is perfectly fine!

I suppose Atwood is a perfectly fine writer, although I've never read any of her stuff. What bothers me is the goo-goo eyed adoration of the CBC staff whenever they interview her. She deserves respect, but it reminds me of the Obama celebrity worship.

Mzzzzz. malice's pieces are an example of why mother's eat their young.

I want to do an experiment...

Go to someplace like Kapuskasing and mention her name. My theory is bags over heads in shame in less than 10 seconds.

I miss Mordecai Richler so damn much. Atwood is a complete bore.

If you wanted to advance the argument that Canada isn't a serious country (not that I would, I'm very patriotic), you could point to the fact that Heather Mallick is considered a real live journalist here.

I guess the Family Guy staff have a lock on the available sea manatees, so Heather must slum with the cloth-bag method.

Can't we get a Canada Council Grant to see about training baby seals to perform sea manatee duties for Canadian wordsmiths? Maybe Samsung would be interested in the project?

Canada is a wonderful country, full of opportunity, otherwise how do you explain a talentless, single issue hack like Mallick as an esteemed member of the cultural elite.

O.M.G. (in bold, size 48 font).

Margaret Atwood AND Heather Mallik?

GAG (in bold, size 72 font).

Whoops. Add a "c" to Heather's name for "crap."

Ok folks we are all in agreement here.

pass around the gravol.

Now let's discuss...why is Atwood so revered?
And is anyone shocked that Mallick is not revering Atwood?

Wowee.

"'The air smells faintly of burning, a smell of caramel and tar and rancid barbecues, and the ashy but greasy smell of a garbage-dump fire after it's been raining.'"

"Sounds like now."

It does, in the sense that for anyone reading Malick's typing the word "now" is a precisely-delineated moment in time.

"There I sit, your basic human at a literary thing, riding my own idiotic train of thought..."

That one, I think, is her editor's mistake; I assume that she wrote "Here I sit..."

I'm so happy other people feel the same way I always have about Margaret Atwood!

I love you guys!

(Hey, do I tell you when to drink?)

bluetech - Atwood is revered - and not just in Canada - because she's left-wing, PC, bourgeoise, staid and harmless. She's an establishment "rebel", so she's got all the bases covered.

Much as I can do without her, mind you, she has a minor talent and doesn't deserve to be typed up in the same sentence as the astonishingly awful Mallick.

EBD: 'now' indeed.

bluetech: Have never read Atwood. I don't recall any mandatory highschool reading (now over a decade ago for myself) which focused on Atwood. We had to read Shakespeare, which aside, I've always also thought is inappropriate literary analysis since it's a play. Never liked reading Shakespeare, but have enjoyed a couple actual theatrical performances. Taming of the Shrew was funny :) Not G.B. Shaw wit, but quite good nonetheless.

As per her apparent high status, well, what Mamba said. Who can say why people with such limited talent can become the focus of so much praise. Re: Obama, Britney Spears, etc.

As the saying goes "Only in America...", well North America at least.

" sexual inadequates that they are"

Ooops that's Heather's other stuff.

I read all the way down to Heather wants to steal Marg's " look" and couldn't take it anymore.

Yeah, Blue Mamba, we should form a club: NEMA, Not Enamoured of Margaret Atwood. I'm delighted to find some fellow travellers here, too!

Atwood's revered for all of the reasons you mention, plus the fact that she's a chauvinistic Canadian, unlike Robertson Davies who, although his novels were set in Canada, didn't make a big deal about it. Who the h*ll cares if the main character is standing on the the corner of Avenue Road and Bloor Street across from the ROM?

I can't stand her closed-mouthed, priggish, anti-Christian, self-righteousness. It's ironic that her hour-long musical/dramatic presentations of "The Year of the Flood" are being held in Christian churches, albeit very lib-left ones, under the auspices of the very religion she loves to hate. How cheap can you get?

I've only read two of her novels, "Survival" and "The Edible Woman," at the urging of university friends many years ago, and found I couldn't stomach any of her other spiritually vacant, sterile, and predictable (vis a vis the feminist manifesto) opuses.

She's a fine poet, but I wouldn't give you two cents for her novels.

so, this refers to the English dialect artspeak?

http://www3.sympatico.ca/manideli/Artsp.htm

I think I was forced to read Atwood during high school (over a quarter century ago now!). I don't think I enjoyed it...although I read voraciously at the time...it wasn't my cuppa tea.

I won't claim that Atwood is a hack...I don't know, not having read her stuff. But just looking at her face and listening to her interviews (I've watched CBC in the past) is enough to convince me I don't want to listen to or read anything she has to say. She carries herself as though she alone (the great intellect that she considers herself to be) sees all and knows all.

For folks like that, I like Kathy Shaidle's line that goes "You're not smart enough to tell me how to live my life". Her sophomoric ramblings would undoubtedly be nauseating to read.

Mallick's writing brings to mind the image of that lame insult..."you have to tie a steak around your neck to get the dog to like you". She writes as though she is so very desperately trying to demonstrate (and convince herself at the same time) how worldly and smart she is. "Please oh please won't you say how clever I am?!"

Pathetic.

Margaret Atwood and John Ralston Saul, giants of Canlit! Now that would be a marriage worthy of celebration by Dante within the ninth circle.

Perhaps Mallick, the ugly stepsister, could be the bridesmaid.

I have always been an obsessive reader. I read everything, even the stuff the JWs force on you at your front door. Yet, after numerous attempts, I have never finished an Atwood book (I once managed to get halfway through Alias Grace). Her writing is just an unnecessary chore. It is kind of funny to me that her newest masterpiece sounds very much like something out of The Watchtower.

Perhaps Mallick, the ugly stepsister, could be the bridesmaid

...and Sheila Copps would be master of ceremonies.

Ugh. Mallick, Atwood, Copps - all three of them are as appealing as fingernails on a chalkboard.

batb - everyone says "she's a fine poet". Maybe she is. I guess I should try her poems.

We all have our tastes. I think Alice Munro is a far superior talent to Atwood, but she bores me stiff too. So does Ondatjee. It's all very introverted, humourless, cold, dysthymic and - as you said - sterile. I think of it as Canadian Antiseptic Writing.

It's been a while since I read Davies - actually, I was a kid - but I remember that he was at least eclectic and lively.

Anyway, this ain't a book club, so I'll stop, noting in passing that none of Heather Mallick's train-of-thought PTSD ramblings should be of interest to anyone other than her poor shrink.

meshuggah - your idiot teachers failed you. Try Harold Bloom on Shakespeare.

Atwood is a distopianist, that is to say: what she writes are her autobiographies. Mallick, on the other hand, is a classic clueless bitchy ditz. Net net, you've got a pair of dry holes. Personally, I'm more interested in productive wells. And if you want productive fiction, try this: Death On Pine Street (1924).

As for myself I am always struck at how Atwood resembles a caricature of the late not so great piroutteing Pierre in drag, ghastly really, the last election when she urged Quebecors to vote bloc on account of miniscule cuts in the pork to so called arty farty types put her at the top of my alltime gag list, one more reason to set fire to CBC and scatter the ashes to the four winds.Perhaps she could collaborate with Iggosauraus on a novel. Two over educated low intellegence Martians on a three hour tour of Disneyland, on a Canada Council Grant of course.
cheers bubba

CBCpravda should run the stories from her with a title.

Heather Mallick -perhaps Canadas worst journalist.

Whether you like Ms Atwood or not, she has achieved a great deal of respect in the world as a writer. I have found some of her books more palatable than others but I have never been in doubt about her ability to write. What I find ironic is that CBC would choose a lightweight like Ms Mallick to review one of Ms Atwood's books. It's an insult.

While Mallick writes nearly as poorly as Atwood, it is very evident Mallick is working extremely hard to prove her mettle.

The only book reviews worth reading these days are by the amateurs on Amazon or the professionals for the Wall Street Journal.

felis corpulentis: "Margaret Atwood and John Ralston Saul" ... actually live on the same street in Toronto. There goes the neighbourhood!

batb:

Really? What neighbourhood is that? Could it be possible that Adrienne and Maggie are "desperate housewives" together?

fc: hahahahahahahah ... 'good one, though they can hardly be graced with the appellation "housewives," who generally stay home to care for hearth and kin rather than gallivant and swan around the world, often on the taxpayers' dime.

They live in The Annex on a small, quiet tree-lined road of old, distinguished mansions with large, hidden gardens. I actually know the name of the road, but do believe in public figures having some privacy ...

fc ... ah, but the desperate part? For sure!!! ;-)