Customer Reviews

Lady Oracle

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Lady Oracle"'s Joan is one of my favorite of Margaret Atwood's heroines. She overcomes the problem of her body image and an unhealthy relationship with her mother with a great sense of humor and a definite mind of her own. My favorite thing about this book is the way Joan weaves her own story into the historical romances she churns out for money. I also love the cynical depiction of the literary world which creates her accidental cult hit "Lady Oracle" out of an experiment in Automatic Writing. The men in Joan's life don't know what to make of her, and their attempts to fit her into their predetermined roles never fail to backfire with hilarious results. As always, Margaret Atwood is right on target.

This is most definately one of my all time favourite books. The way Margaret Atwood examines how pre-occupied our society is about body image is both halirious, sad and unbelievably realistic. She is able to demonstrate how we all struggle to find our identity while at the same time are terrified to come to terms with our true selves, past and present. Despite the fact, the protagonist went to ridiculous extremes to hide her past, I felt I could relate to her situation. This is a wonderful book for anyone who has struggled with their self image. It is also a great read for anyone who loves to laugh!

_Lady Oracle_ is, essentially, a novel told mostly as a huge flashback. That said, it was quite enjoyable, even if the plot didn't make complete sense. The main character, Joan Foster, fakes her own death to escape the stresses of her current life, and moves to Italy, from where she tells us the majority of the story. After a traumatic childhood, and having grown dangerously overweight (which she did as a psychological weapon against her mother), Joan's Aunt Lou dies, leaving her a substantial amount of money on the condition that Joan lose 100 pounds. Joan loses the weight, ultimately causing more problems with her mother (because her mother wanted to be the one to get Joan to slim down), ultimately culminating with her mother attempting (and failing) to stab her. Joan moves to England and winds up mistress to an exiled, reactionary Polish count. From here she begins writing trashy Gothic romances for a living under the pseudonym of L. Delacourt. She later meets and marries Arthur, a manic socialist (or something) activist. Eventually she has a book published under her own name, a collection of poetry entitled (coincidentally enough) Lady Oracle, which becomes an immediate cult classic. This book eventually leads to her faked death, as her celebrity leads her to (among other things) an affair with an avante-garde artist who calls himself the Royal Porcupine, and an ex-CBC anchor intent on blackmailing her.

It struck me, though, that Joan doesn't really seem to believe in much of anything. She goes through the motions for people to make them happy. She is whatever those around her want her to be. In fact, the only thing she ever seems to do of her own volition is fake her death. Initiative is not on Joan Foster's agenda. Neither is truth. One wonders a bit if anything is.

In any case, _Lady Oracle_ is good, but it's nowhere near as good as _The Handmaid's Tale_. If you haven't read the latter already, I highly recommend it.

once again, Margaret Atwood doesn't disappoint. Her characters are complex, smart, funny, appealing. Her writing style is strong and engaging. A terrific antidote for anyone who's fed up with syrupy, sentimental, victim-centered Chick lit.

Well I went to Canada and figured trying out a Margaret Atwood would be appropriate. This novel reminds me of good John Irving. It combines a healthy amount of plot to keep things moving, along with quirky / interesting characters that remain just normal and developed enough to avoid becoming farcical. Moreover, the narrator is a strong central figure that ties things together and keeps the book focused. Finally, the narrator goes through introspection and change, and Atwood gently guides the reader there via use of a "story within a story" that is never overbearing. I know I didn't pick up on all of the symbolism and "deeper meanings" of Joan, but I know I enjoyed being along for the ride with her. Very much recommended for the thoughtful reader.

Lady Oracle / 0-553-37781-7

Like many of Atwood's characters, the main character of Lady Oracle suffers from an unhappy childhood, this time at the hands of a neurotic mother who frequently berates her daughter for failing to live up to her expectations. The result is a fractured personality - many different personas that have to be juggled regularly, and with increasing difficulty.

This fractured woman struggles with her relationships and her jobs, and how they affect her identity. Does her success at writing fluffy romance novels make her a less serious, worthwhile human being? Does her success at writing deep, meaningful, feminist poetry make her a less valuable spouse to her husband? Her romances are shallow, and she seeks out men who define her in contrast to themselves. She allows others to define her because, increasingly, she cannot define herself. As the novel winds down, we venture tentatively into the Atwood meme of insanity - are the events narrated to the us merely a product of a deranged mind on the part of the main character? We do not know.

I really love Atwood's writing, and own nearly all of her novels, but I will admit that Lady Oracle is not my favorite. The writing and story are, for me, strangely forgettable - even after re-reading the book recently in order to write this review, I find that much of the book did not leave a lasting impression on me, unlike her other, more recent works. "Lady Oracle" is an older work, and perhaps that is why it doesn't have the same grip on me. I recommend it, but only after you have read her more recent works.

~ Ana Mardoll

"Lady Oracle" has many elements found in Margaret Atwood's later, and better, novels. We have a woman reminiscing about her rotten childhood, especially in dealing with bullying female classmates, as in Atwood's "Cat's Eye". This same woman is also a writer who blurs her fiction with her own life, as in Atwood's "Blind Assassin". In truth I sensed "Lady Oracle" to be in some sense autobiographical, with the author working through her personal complex issues and expressing them in prose ... and not very successfully.

Oh, there is a story. Woman writer fakes her death and escapes to Italy. She then recounts her entire life, husbands and affairs and all. It all has a 1960s trashy soap opera feel about it. Unlike other amazon.com reviewers I didn't find this book particularly humorous, although the prose itself is quite clever ... Atwood's most notable trademark.

Bottom line: disappointing and entirely forgettable. Not recommended.

She is one of my favorite authors! Everything of hers that I have read is intriguing and thought-provoking. This book, from 1976, is no exception. I liked the story of this writer, who couldn't identify with her characters, who lived so many different lives, that the only way to straighten everything out was to fake her own death. It felt original and new - and not just for a book that is over thirty years old. I really liked it - though I was a bit disappointed that she seemed to have "fallen in love" again by the end... but even that mild disappointment isn't enough to distract from how much I loved the book as a whole. This book did remind me a bit of a few others - like the others had taken elements from this one, particularly in the body-image and the main characters' overweight childhood. Wally Lamb's _She's Come Undone_ is the first example of one of those books that came to mind.

The first meeting with Joan Foster on the balcony of the pensione in Italy is purposefully misleading - this novel is far from the relaxing report from an Italian vacation. But soon enough, Joan, the main character and narrator, makes sure the reader is shocked and intrigued, pushing them to read on. Joan reveals that she faked her own death and is now in hiding. Why? What led her to this, seemingly desperate, step? Her story starts in childhood and meanders through all the turns of girl's and woman's life. As a child, Joan is fighting with weight and longing for beauty, has a perfectionist, overambitious, always unhappy mother and absent (even when present) father, who appears very boring and apathetic at home, but his life is mysterious and full of secrets. Tormented by her mother, Joan escapes into overeating; she is friendless and shy, the girls at Brownies bully her. Her only friend is her aunt Louisa K. Delacourt, who introduces her to the world of movies and spiritual séances. And thanks to Aunt Lou, Joan is finally motivated to lose weight...

Growing up, Joan manages to get the attention of men, but other women (except Aunt Lou, whose identity Joan uses as her alter ego) remain always her antagonists. She is unstable and her life is a mess, she has many ideas for improvement, but always ends up disappointed with herself and longing to erase the past and start afresh from zero again...She desperately wishes for love (a result of an unhappy childhood...) and so meets a parade of less than perfect men: her first lover, Paul, a Polish political émigré in London, who introduces her to the world of trashy romance novels; Arthur, who she marries, a myopic rebel; and her most romantic love, The Royal Porcupine vel Chuck, who is an artist exhibiting animal carcasses. All of them are disappointing, when seen closely, and so Joan is always unsatisfied. She is not able to perceive her life as full and interesting, always waiting, never stable, never feeling the present as something good - sort of anti - yoga approach.

Atwood is usually labeled as a feminist writer, and I can understand it, although she is, simply, just a very good writer. In her novels, the characters display many traits, fears, thoughts common to many women, which most of the women would not admit having (or would admit only at the session with the psychoanalyst). In "Lady Oracle" like in her other novels, she refers to feminine logic and intuition, making the novel at the same time very chaotic - like the lives of perhaps of too many contemporary women trying to get from their time on Earth as much as possible, squeeze the life as much as it hurts, hoping there is always more. The novel felt at the same time very personal and very general, a remarkable achievement. There are, of course, common Atwood motifs (she repeats herself a bit, it is not yet autoplagiarism, but establishing a firm ground, a safe niche for herself, which she mastered to perfection, in all her novels coming back to the same subject in different configurations: the main protagonist's struggle with her personal image, the books written by her as a parallel reality, the toxic mother-daughter relationship, spiritualism, cruelty of little girls, child molesters...). In "Lady Oracle" the most original is the title and its interpretation in the text - "Lady Oracle" is not only the title of Joan's bestseller, but she appears also in her visions with the candle and automatic writing, and, in the distorted version, can be the medium she meets with Aunt Lou... Reading, I was always thinking about the meaning of the title.

I appreciate the author's obvious eloquence and effortless jiggling of mythical themes (the Persephone comes to mind, when Joan tries her automatic writing), fairy tale images, and historical and social stereotypes. I like her irony and wit, woven into the flawless prose so that nothing looks forced and the story flows naturally (I laughed at the changes in style when the excerpts from Joan's novel appeared). Atwood manages to write lightly about very serious matters, and despite the light language the problems tackled in her novels remain with the reader forever, they do not disappear, but fester, demanding attention, urging to think and analyze. I was a bit disappointed with the ending, which, although very unexpected, appeared rushed, as if the author could not wait for the climax. Therefore, I rate this novel four stars, because Atwood can be better.

"Lady Oracle" started slowly--or maybe I just had trouble engaging with it initially, as I was trying to figure out who exactly the narrator was. But once Joan began recounting and reflecting on her life, I was hooked. Atwood used this device of mixing past and present in "The Robber Bride" and "Cat's Eye" as well, but I actually think it works best here. Joan is quite a character, and meets some remarkable people (remarkable in ways good and bad) throughout the course of her life. These are some of Atwood's best character creations. The antics of Joan and the Royal Porcupine had me laughing out loud. I wish I had some of these people in my own life, if only for the amusement value!

This is maybe Atwood's funniest novel, though as is her style, the humor is subtle and used sparingly. I am a huge fan of her prose and narration; it amazes me that she can effective use "big words" and address "big ideas" while seeming conversational and accessible rather than pompously erudite. (Ahem, Ian McEwan?)

My only criticism of "Lady Oracle" was the ending. I greatly enjoyed Joan's telling of her life story, but her reasons for faking her death and fleeing to Italy were contrived and rather ridiculously melodramatic. Granted, the line between her novels and actual life was beginning to blur, but still, it seemed more like a too-obvious plot device to frame the narrative. And the ending was just marked by futility. Hence, I give the book four rather than five stars. Nonetheless, I highly recommend it for Atwood fans as well as others who enjoy character-driven narrative fiction. This goes on my list of favorite Atwood, along with "Oryx and Crake" and "Alias Grace".