Ever since her engagement, the strangest thing has been happening to Marian McAlpin: she can't eat. First meat. Then eggs, vegetables, cake, pumpkin seeds—everything! Worse yet, she has the crazy feeling that she's being eaten. Marian ought to feel consumed with passion, but she really just feels...consumed. A brilliant and powerful work rich in irony and metaphor, "The Edible Woman is an unforgettable masterpiece by a true master of contemporary literary fiction.
The novel that put the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments on the literary map. The Booker Prize winner's first novel is both a scathingly funny satire of consumerism and a heady exploration of emotional cannibalism.
Marian McAlpin is an “abnormally normal” young woman, according to her friends. A recent university graduate, she crafts consumer surveys for a market research firm, maintains an uneasy truce between her flighty roommate and their prudish landlady, and goes to parties with her solidly dependable boyfriend, Peter. But after Peter proposes marriage, things take a strange turn. Suddenly empathizing with the steak in a restaurant, Marian finds she is unable to eat meat. As the days go by, her feeling of solidarity extends to other categories of food, until there is almost nothing left that she can bring herself to consume. Those around her fail to notice Marian’s growing alienation—until it culminates in an act of resistance that is as startling as it is imaginative. Marked by blazingly surreal humor and a colorful cast of eccentric characters, The Edible Woman is a groundbreaking work of fiction.
“"Margaret Atwood takes risks and wins." --Time "Throughout her literary career...Margaret Atwood has impressed and delighted readers with her wit, lyric virtuosity and imaginative acuity." --San Francisco Chronicle "One of the most intelligent and talented writers to set herself the task of deciphering life in the late twentieth century." --Vogue "Chock-full of startling images, superbly and classically crafted...Kept me in stitches half the time." --Saturday Night "Atwood has the magic of turning the particular and the parochial into the universal." --The Times(London)”
“Disconcerting, faintly ominous, and moving with the greatest of ease from the expected to the unexpected. . . . Waywardly funny. . . . A distinct pleasure to read.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Atwood has the magic of turning the particular and the parochial into the universal.” —The Times (London)
"Chock-full of startling images, superbly and classically crafted. . . . Kept me in stitches half the time." —Saturday Night
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade.
Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
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