Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021

by Margaret Atwood

In this brilliant selection of essays, the award-winning, best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments offers her funny, erudite, endlessly curious, and uncannily prescient take on everything from whether or not The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopia to the importance of how to define granola—and seeks answers to Burning Questions such as...

• Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? Including thoughts on the writing of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, Oryx & Crake, and her other beloved works.
• How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating?
• How can we live on our planet?
• Is it true? And is it fair?
• What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism?

In more than fifty pieces, Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humor at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This roller-coaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump, and a pandemic. From when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to Atwood’s views on the climate crisis, we have no better guide to the many and varied mysteries of our universe.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Feminism, Audiobook, Memoir, Short Stories, Canada

479 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2022

About the author

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.

Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth ­ in the Massey series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.

Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Associations: Margaret Atwood was President of the Writers' Union of Canada from May 1981 to May 1982, and was President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking) from 1984-1986. She and Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International. Ms. Atwood is also a current Vice-President of PEN International.

Reviews

[Regina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here you have a 2022 collection of 50+ astute, yet sometimes overly-wordy, writings from Margaret Atwood that attempt to answer burning questions such as: Q: Is she still alive? A: Yes!

This roundup includes:

• Speeches she’s given on various societal concerns (eg global warming).
• Book reviews and dissection of the works by authors such as Stephen King, L.M. Montgomery, and Simone de Beauvoir.
• Thoughts on the writing craft.

This is a book that should be purchased and set on your nightstand, picked up from time-to-time when you want to read a little something before bed without having to commit to a long-form plot.

Unfortunately I listened to the audiobook, which was kind of weird since it’s narrated by a bevy of random people. Odd to hear a famous voice like Atwood’s replaced by a dude with an accent, for example. Plus, at 19 hours, that’s just a long time to be listening to a spew of essays all in one go.

Burning Questions was a 3-star book for me, but I’m rounding it up a full star cuz clearly I did it wrong.

Blog: https://www.confettibookshelf.com/

[Emily B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book has made me want to reread some of Margaret Atwood’s novels again. I was luckily enough to go to one of her talks when she was in Oxford promoting hagseed and I recognise the wit she showed then, in these essays. So many were about incredibly important topics, such as climate change and women’s rights and were handled in a sensitive, intellectual but accessible and interesting way.

The essays/obituaries concerning other authors inspired me to look into their work. I like coming away from a book with other books to read.

I felt the most touching and memorably essays were the personal ones, mainly about her husband. If anything I wish there were more of these.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a compilation of Atwood's talks, speeches, book reviews, published forewords and other miscellaneous pieces from 2004 forwards. What is striking is the sheer range of Atwood's interests and the way she manages to put herself into her words making them both public and personal.

The talks and lectures do read as verbal pieces and there are presentational things that we say, that we wouldn't generally write. But everything she turns her hand to is insightful without ever becoming supercilious or know-all-y (despite the fact she really does know an awful lot!) With no soapbox feel, no posturing, no beating us over the head, this is a shared kind of conversation, no matter how urgent the topics.

From insider views on her writing and books, to her thoughts on Doris Lessing and Simone de Beauvoir, to the climate emergency and erosion of democracy, Atwood is passionate but balanced, eminently reasonable though incisive, with a keen eye on the intersections between literature and politics.

Thanks to Vintage/Chatto & Windus for an ARC via NetGalley

[Henk]

Excited! So satisfying to see how prolific an author Margaret Atwood is!
www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6049883

[Karen· · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say?

Just brilliant.

Although, I had to stop reading her book reviews, as they led to far too many additions to my toppling pile of yet to be cracked open books.

La Atwood certainly makes you think: about climate change and what we are doing to our planet, and about gender.
An intriguing little anecdote of my own, which is very pertinent to gender:
I recently had workmen come in to look at a fairly major undertaking, a job requiring excavation and damp-proofing, that kind of thing. In the course of which, one of said workmen took a squint at me and, in view of the fact that it was obviously me making the decisions about what needed doing, asked if I was on my own?
Yes.
Further questions revealed that I was widowed. It turned out that this gentleman had lost his wife only six months ago. Of course, I made the suitable sympathetic noises. More scrutiny. Then he said:
"It's worse for men."
Wow.
I thought that generation had died out? With my Dad, my father-in-law; the men who aren't able to make a cup of coffee, or tea. The ones who don't know where the washing machine is, let alone how to use it. Mind you, they were often kept in a state of helplessness by their womenfolk, who, at least in my mother's case, liked to boost her virtues by turning domesticity into The Dark Arts, arcane and complex. Beyond the ken of anyone not trained and practised.

Just my two-pennyworth.

[leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

atwood’s voice is strong throughout all of these essays - the perfect mix of intelligence and wit. the collection feels slightly repetitive at times because a few essays are on the same subject, but if you read this over a few months it wouldn’t matter much. this just reminded me that i really need to hurry up and read the handmaid’s tale.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up

Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004–2021 collects Atwood's essays, speeches, book forewords and other miscellaneous non-fiction pieces produced of the last 17 years. This latest collection follows Moving Targets: Writing with Intent 1982 - 2004 / Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose, 1983-2005 and Second Words: Selected Critical Prose.

As can be seen from the above wide range of formats of the pieces included, the book covers a number of mediums and a large variety of topics. My own personal preference would have been for these to have been reduced / streamlined in quantity to form a more coherent overall collection - or maybe if they had been presented in a different way, as reading the forewords to a couple of random books in a row and out of context doesn't really appeal to me, and I'd rather the book was more curated or grouped by topic than presented chronologically.

Perhaps one more for the completist Atwood fans among us, but I think I'll probably be sticking to her fiction in the future.

Thank you Netgalley and Vintage for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I was a little confused by the variety of narrators and thought perhaps that it was a book of essays with many authors, but this was not the case. Once I realized that all the essays are written by Margaret Atwood, however there are several narrators, including Atwood herself I settled back to enjoy. After a time, I appreciated the variety of voices. There were so many times when I leaned right in to hear and understand. Atwood writes with a true common sense and articulates her thoughts artfully. I was astonished to learn that when she wrote, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ she included only events that were already occurring somewhere in the world! It was not a work of science fiction.

I thoroughly appreciated what she had to say about how truly essential the arts are to our well-being. “The arts as we’ve come to term them are not a frill, they are the heart of the matter because they are about our hearts and our technological inventiveness is generated by our emotions not just by our minds. A society without the arts would have broken its mirror and cut out its heart. It would no longer be what we recognize as human.”

The Gift (2012): “What is the nature of art? Is a work of art a commodity with a money value to be bought and sold like a potato? Or is it a gift on which no real price can be placed to be freely exchanged? And if works are gifts and nothing but how are their creators to live in the physical world in which food will sooner or later be needed by them. Should they be sustained by reciprocal gifts made by the public. The equivalent of the gifts placed in the Zen monks begging bowl. Should they exist in quasi-Shaker communities of the like-minded?”

Doctor Sleep (2013): I loved her analysis of Stephen King’s book Doctor Sleep. Atwood writes that “King’s good and evil arrangement is usually yin and yang with a spot of darkness in every goody and a tiny ray of sunshine in every baddy,” which makes absolute sense when you stop to think about it.

She describes her own reading experience of Doctor Sleep, which evidently held her in its thrall, as she writes, “wild ectoplasmic partially decayed vampire horses would not tear from me the story of what happens next, but let me assure you King is a pro, by the end of this book your fingers will be mere stubs of their former selves and you will be looking askance at every person in the supermarket line-up because if they turn around they might have metallic eyes.”

From: How to Change the World (2013): “For each of our technologies is a two-edged sword. One edge slices the way we want it to. The other edge cuts our fingers. The world we’ve made would seem magical to the people of even five hundred years ago. Yet, we are less sorcerers than sorcerer’s apprentices. We can release the genies from their bottles but trying to cram them back in again seems at present well beyond us. We’ve created the juggernaut; we live within it. If it were to stop the most horrible chaos and anarchy would result.”

Atwood laments the lack of investment in environmental concerns. We give generously to other causes but fail to see the urgent need in saving the environment that we rely on for our continued existence. As usual, we treat the symptoms rather than find and treat the root cause. Atwood writes that “a tiny spec of our wealth, less than 3% of all charitable giving is channeled into the increasingly desperate efforts to preserve a functioning biosphere. By functioning, I mean in such a way that we ourselves can continue to exist.”

In Transationland (2014) is a love letter to translators and acknowledges the extraordinary feats they accomplish in their work. My own world has been expanded by the work of translators whose efforts to communicate the nuanced meaning of words and phrases in one language into another is often overlooked or underestimated. Atwood completes her essay with: “So thank you, Dear translators. As writers, we are in your hands. As readers, you open doors for us that would otherwise remain shut, and you allow us to hear voices that would otherwise remain silent. Like writing itself, your work rests on the belief of human communication. That’s no small hope.” Finally, she includes the words ‘thank you’ in many languages.

On Beauty (2014) tackles how our society values beauty in women and the part they play. Men’s magazines highlight accessible, smiling compliant women. In contrast, women’s fashion magazines highlight aloof self-sufficient women who don’t need a man and are envied by other women. “The extravagant clothes and high-end makeup jobs send the same signal. You can’t buy me except at my own price, which is apt to be very high because I already have what I want.” She ends her essay with: “Skin deep or not, curse or blessing, disdainful or seductive, reality or constructed illusion beauty retains its magic power at least in our imaginations and that’s why we continue to buy those countless little tubes of lip gloss. We still believe in fairies.”

Shakespeare and Me. A Tempestuous Love Story (2016): “Grasping Shakespeare is like nailing jelly to a wall.”

The Equivalents (2020): “The past is always another country but we can visit it as tourists and its useful to have such a thorough guide.”

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this overly wordy and difficult to read without a context. There was an enormous range to this set of essays, presented chronologically rather than in sections and I felt this led to my disorientation with the pieces. Not my favourite read by her- think I’ll stick to her fiction.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Series of essays written between 2004 and 2021 on topics related to social trends and possible future disruptions. Atwood is a big picture thinker. She takes an idea the relates it to other relevant subjects and themes, making her points along the way. Margaret Atwood’s essays are intelligent and witty. Her self-deprecating sense of humor shines through. She addresses issues such as civil rights, climate change, feminism, and literature. Provides a peek into the process of writing several of her books. I enjoyed her answers to questions she is often asked by readers. This compilation includes speeches she has given on a variety of occasions, and essays she has written over seventeen years, so there are a few overlaps and repetitions. Margaret Atwood is a treasure. In my opinion, we can never have enough writers like Atwood who boldly push boundaries and spur people to think about important topics.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the years, I've enjoyed the work of Margaret Atwood. My first exposure was during my university days, when I tried Surfacing, The Edible Woman and a collection of poetry, The Circle Game. I stopped reading her books until 1974's The Handmaid's Tale and since that time I've been sampling her work on a much more regular basis; The Blind Assassin, The Penepoliad, her Oryx & Crake trilogy and other poetry collections.

Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2021 is her latest work, a collection of essays and other non-fiction articles, published in 2022. I don't often read these kinds of works, although I have been trying more and more non-fiction of late. I do find myself drawn to Atwood for some reason. Is it because we are both Scorpios, both born in November? Who knows. I just like the way her mind works, her way of writing, her stories. And even her poetry, a genre with which I do struggle works for me. (Not always, but I do enjoy making the effort.

Burning Questions is a follow-on book to two earlier collections of essays. This collection covers the period 2004 - 2021 and is broken into five sections; 2004 - 2009, 2010 - 2013, 2014 - 2016, 2017 - 2019 & 2020 - 2021. Each section purportedly has a theme but I think you'll find that they do track throughout each segment, just that there are also particular essays that were written during each particular period.

I have to say that my particular favorites cover other writers, especially writers with whom I'm familiar. Atwood talks about Alice Munro (a couple of times, actually), LM Montgomery, Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, Stephen King, Doris Lessing, etc. In some cases it's in reference to a particular book, King's Doctor Sleep, Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, but even in those cases, Atwood delves into the characteristics and writing of the authors. Some are remembrances of specific authors, case in point, her memories of Ursula Le Guin, on her death. Her comments did make me want to read more of these authors or to explore their works.

Atwood does also explore various themes. The threat to the environment is an ongoing thread through each section and she especially talks about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and other works and the way that efforts were made to discredit Carson, to silence her. Atwood's highlighting her Oryx & Crake trilogy is another environmental theme.

Another theme is the efforts of autocracies to silence writers and to control women. This is explored so very well, in speeches, essays. Of course, she also uses The Handmaid's Tale and her latest The Testaments as thematic elements in this discourse.

I found a portion of the last chapter, the essays talking about her husband, fellow author Graeme Gibson, who passed away in 2019. Her discussions on his writing was especially poignant.

There is so much in this collection to enjoy. I've found myself ordering other books by Atwood, even though I still have 3 of her books on my shelf to read. I enjoy her writing style. She's a wanderer, moving along and changing tack in the middle of an article, sometimes not finishing her original thread, but it doesn't matter. There is humor, thoughtfulness and an eminent readability. The essays flow from one to the other and are a pleasure to read. I loved it and my try to find her other essay collections. (4.5 stars) (How can you even rate it????)

[Georgina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has increased by 'to be read' list considerably! Margaret Atwood writes so engagingly on so many topics, including many other books that influenced her. I am so pleased to have read this and love her style and content. A great book.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am fairly certain in the past I have uttered the phrase "I would read Margaret Atwood's grocery list", because while there is a bit of variability in her writing, it's always interesting. This collection has taught me a lesson that I should have known all along - not everything needs to be published, or at least not everything published need be read by me, not even everything written by a favorite author.

There are a handful of excellent essays and some very informative pieces, as well as some laughs throughout but there is also a fair amount of repetition and a good number of introductions she was asked to write for other authors - again, some were very interesting, others less so. I think this collection would be enjoyed more by those that are very widely read (more so than I am) and enjoy reading literary criticism - I don't think I have the proper foundation to fully appreciate some of what is collected here.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5*

Ohhh, how I didn't like the audio version :( - too many different narrators... soooo confusing.

Visai esė rinktinei pavadinimas tikrai klaidinantis. Didžiąja dalimi tai esė apie literatūrą, atskirus rašytojus, jų kūrinius, apie pačios autorės knygas, save pačią ir tik mažąja - karštesnėmis temomis.

[Karen Foster · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy Margaret Atwood’s fiction very much. She is always thought-provoking, wryly funny, and often down-right brilliant. I just didn’t LOVE this collection of speeches and essays on various topics. I think the structuring of the pieces chronologically and not thematically, maybe made it feel too random? And whilst I loved certain essays, the collection as a whole felt way too long and the content repetitive at times. With so many pieces in one collection, individual pieces lost their power, in a sea of great writing.

[Jose Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabuloso conhecer melhor os pensamentos, a vida e as preocupações desta autora que gosto tanto.
A escrita é, como habitual, de mestre.

[Nadine · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Male self-esteem, it seemed, depended on men not being women. All the more necessary that women should be forced to be as “female” as possible, even when - especially when - the male-created definition of “female” included the power to pollute, seduce, and weaken men.”

“Women, it seems, are not a footnote after all: they are the necessary center around which the wheel of power revolves; or, seen another way, they are the broad base of the triangle that sustains a few oligarchs at the top.”

“The old saying - attributed to the abolitionist Wendell Philips - is right: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”


Burning Questions is really a hodgepodge of Atwood’s writing organized chronologically as she covers a wide variety of topics including climate change, book reviews, homages, and reflections on her past work and life. Since her works are ordered chronologically, it’s easy to pick out the hot button topics of the time. Her works get progressively darker as the years pass and the works have a more recent publishing date.

Some essays were difficult to get through as I wasn’t interested in the topic, while others I wished were longer. Some of my favourite essays/talks were when Atwood went in depth about her previous works. More specifically, her inspirations, the time to complete the novels, feedback she received, etc. These insights into her writing process were fascinating.

Atwood wrote a lot of introductions to novels and reviews that peaked my interest. Namely, The Echo Maker by Richard Powers, Alice Munro, Stephen King, The Sea trilogy by Rachel Carson, From Eve to Dawn by Marilyn French, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, and Atwood’s own book of poetry, Dearly.

It took me much longer than anticipated to read Burning Questions, but that was because reading essay after essay is tiring. Burning Questions is best read slowly in order to fully digest Atwood’s writing.

[Chris Dietzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything Atwood writes is good. This is no exception. I loved the wide ranging topics of these essays, and as a result I added a couple books she mentioned to my to-read list. I particularly liked her insights on some of her popular books including The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and Hag-Seed.

The only part that detracted for me was how poorly some of her political worries and observations held up over time. In a couple different instances she notes the serious risk of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution being overturned and women losing their right to vote. I looked it up and the only instances of anything remotely like this occurring were Glenn Beck in 2009 making a joke about repealing the 19th Amendment, a female GOP strategist being asked in 2016 what she thought of some online trolls mentioning that it would be a good idea for women not to be able to vote, and some local county official in Oregon in 2020 making a joke about it. There was never anything even remotely serious and definitely not by anyone who should be taken seriously but Atwood talks about it as if there had been the rumblings of a genuine effort, and that made it seem like she was misinformed and falling into the trap of getting her news from unreliable sources meant to fear-monger rather than inform.

Other than that, though, this was a great book for any fan of the author.

[Elizabeth A · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the blub: In over fifty pieces Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humor at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds.

I have dipped in and out of this collection for the past 4 months. I was entertained and educated. What more can one ask for? Atwood is an erudite deep thinker. As expected not ever piece is fantastic, however this is a really great collection of her writings over this period of time.

Rating for Margaret Atwood Books
The Handmaid's Tale - 5
Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1) - 4
The Blind Assassin - 4
Angel Catbird, Vol. 1 (Angel Catbird, #1) - 1
Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021 - 4

[Helen Frost · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolute treat for the mind. I’d read The Handmaid’s Tale many years ago, as part of my English Literature A Level and had great respect for Margaret Atwood from that point. I loved her highly original storyline, but also her great insight and observations into human nature. I’ve since enjoyed her follow up to HMT, The Testaments, plus watched and enjoyed the associated TV adaptations. The chance to ARC these, non fiction, essays was something I therefore jumped at.
This book takes diverse and thought provoking topics and gives the author’s own, unique and intelligent, feelings and take on them and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the essays. It was a real privilege to get to know the author better through her personal and honest thoughts and feelings and she does not hold back even amongst the more demanding and controversial subject areas which was refreshing and humbling. I found I share a lot of her thought processes and ideals and I challenged some of my own preconceived ideas along the way too.
My ARC copy had a few formatting problems, for example certain letter patterns were omitted eg -ff and -th and any numeric values were also missing. This actually didn’t detract too much however, it made it feel as though I was cracking some mystic code to unlock secrets and it was more than worth it. A definite recommend from me.

[Chaitanya Sethi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm always up for a peek into Atwood's mind. And this book was 450 pages of it. What's not to like?

FULL REVIEW

This is my sixth Atwood book overall, and third this year. Clearly, I am a fan. In this collection, Margaret spans a total of 18 years (2004 onwards) and brings us essays featuring book forewards, authors, obituaries, literature, politics, and climate change, amongst others.

In the inside jacket of this hardcover edition lies the remark that this "charts the ceaseless activity of a truly original mind". It does.

I was on an Atwood binge while reading this and heard many podcasts where she promoted this book; amazed by her wit, assessment, and unassuming presence. Reading her affirms the same.

Since I read her other essay collection which had a similar assortment of essays from 1970-2004, I have now read Atwood across 50 years. And I've come to know her love for Alice Munro; her dedication to finding historical context for what she writes; her love for reading, and genre defining titles like The Island of Dr. Moreau and We; the patience with which she tells the story of The Handmaid's Tale over and over.

As fun as it was for me to read this, I can question if this collection was overwhelming for someone new to her for two reasons:
1. The linear timeline structure which jumps across genres from one essay to other
2. Essays on the literary analysis of niche authors/titles

I think it would have been easier to read, were the essays arranged by theme than year. There were essays on topics that didn't interest me. My favourite bits were her essays analyzing her own work, and personal essays on life with Graham (her partner).

I will say, upon reading over 50 essays from the same person, enjoying 90% of them is quite the success for this book.

[Książkoty · Rating 5 out of 5]

O zbiorach zawsze ciężko jest coś napisać, a w szczególności ocenić. Jednak tutaj wiedziałam, że dam 5 gwiazdek. Nie było "złych" esejów, tylko takie, które przez temat - mniej mnie interesowały, jednak dalej pisarsko nic nie można im było zarzucić.
Wszystkie teksty były błyskotliwe. Niektóre zabawne - w szczególności te, w których autorka ukazuje dystans do siebie i swojej twórczości. Inne poważne, trudne - poruszające tematy społeczne, polityczne, ekologiczne. Często bardzo bezpośrednie, autorka nie ukrywa swoich poglądów, a jednocześnie nie mamy w nich nienawiści - tylko dużą wrażliwość.
Atwood zapewniła mi dużo rozmyślań o aspektach, których w okolicznościach dnia codziennego - pominęłabym: nie zastanawiałabym się nad nimi.

[Jo Rawlins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret Atwood is incredibly knowledgeable; but importantly: she is wise.

Reading Burning Questions was like meeting up with old friends and meeting new ones. Some of the essays I had read before but most I had not yet come across. Either way, there is so much to think about as you read through this collection. I love how she weaves through her love of Shakespeare, the impact of Orwell's 1984, the experience of having written A Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace and Hagseed and Oryx and Crake (All of which, I have read) with her deep concern for the state of the world: the environment, equality and abuse of power.

This is a highly readable collection of essays. I will be dipping in and out of what will be a highly treasured collection from one of my favourite authors.

I highly recommend Burning Questions to all who are intrigued by Atwood or the state of the world in general!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Jeff Koeppen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fans of Margaret Atwood will certainly enjoy this collection of 65 (if my Wisconsin math is correct) essays written from 2004 to 20022 in which she covers just about any subject you can think of in a witty, intelligent, and Canadian point of view. I was pleasantly surprised at how funny she is.

This was a mixed bag for me. Some essays I found to be excellent, particularly the ones about how she created some of his fantastic novels, and some to be personally not interesting and skim-worthy. Also, there was some repetition as you might suspect with her pumping out this many essays over the course of just eighteen years.

There are a number of interesting and insightful book reviews, some of which I've read. Two standouts were Ann of Green Gables and The Illustrated Man.

She wrote tribute essays to authors such as: Ann Munro, Rachel Carlson, Kafka, Doris Lessing, Ursula Le Guin, and Barry Lopez.

I was surprised to read so many nature related essays. One of the best ones was "Trees of Life, Trees of Death" which was a tribute to trees which she delivered at the Department of Forestry's centennial. Another essay is about her late husband's, Graeme Gibson, book The Bedside Book of Birds which was about his and Margaret's backyard bird watching and his interest in birds in literature.

My favorites of the bunch were of her thoughts behind and motivations for her famous novels. As expected she writes much about The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, but she also delves deep in to her inspiration behind the fantastic MaddAddam trilogy. And in a particularly interesting essay called "Shakespeare and Me" she states that Shakespeare is her favorite author and writes at length about The Tempest and how it inspired her Hag-Seed. All very interesting.

The book finishes with an extensive listing of credits and an index for easy recall if you want to revisit a subject.

Highly recommended to any fans of her prolific body of work. You'll get an interesting glimpse it to what makes this lady tick.

[Kelly Brill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure. I didn't read every essay in this collection. I didn't read the reviews of books I haven't read, for example. But what I did read was brilliant. Atwood, of course, is brilliant and funny as heck, and passionately concerned about art and about people and about the future of the planet. I appreciated so much her words about writing: "...people are always lining up to preach to writers about their duties - what they ought to be writing, or what they should not have written; and they are very ready to tell the writer what a bad person he or she is because he or she has not produced the sort of book or essay that the preacher feels he or she ought to have produced..." She rejects the "shoulds"and asserts instead: "What kinds of stories can we writers tell about our increasingly desperate situation? What kinds might be of any help to the community of which we are a part? I can't tell you that because I don't know. But I do know that as long as we have hope - and we still do have hope - we will be telling stories..."

She writes about The Handmaid's Tale (so chilling to read these word this very week) - "...it seems that in the state-control-of-women's-bodies department, I was a little too close to the mark." But she also writes this, "There's always hope. Hope is built-in. I's also catching: where there is hope, there will be more hope, because with hope, people make an effort. An effort is what, in the future we will all have to make."

In another essay on The Handmaid's Tale - "absolutist governments have always taken an inordinate interest in the reproductive capabilities of women."

She wrote a speech, "We Hang by a Thread," in 2016, right before Trump was elected. "During the campaign we have seen an outpouring of misogyny not witnessed since the witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century...you have to pinch yourself to make sure you're awake...this is.a reminder to us that the hard-won rights for women and girls that many of us now take for granted could be snatched away at any moment."

And in 2017, an essay about what kind of art will be produced in the Trump era...some will produce witness art...Surely the journal-keepers are already at work, inscribing events and their responses to them..."As once-solid certainties crumble, it may be enough to cultivate your own artistic garden - to do what you can for as long as you can do it; to create alternate worlds that offer both temporary escapes and moments of insight; to open windows in the given world that allow us to see outside it...it's the artists and writers who can remind us, in times of crisis or panic, that...we are not, finally, the sum of our politicians. Throughout history, it has been hope for artistic work that expresses, for this time and place, as powerfully and eloquently as possible, what it means to be human."

The importance of bearing witness.

[Katarzyna Nowicka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret Atwood kanadyjska pisarka, poetka, krytyczka literacka i aktywistka społeczna i ekologiczna. Barwna kobieca postać w literackim świecie. Wymieniana wśród kandydatów do literackiej Nagrody Nobla.
"Palące pytania - eseje aktualne z lat 2004-2021" to jej trzeci tom szkiców, wykładów i okazjonalnych artykułów.
Atwood to rozsądny, bystry, szczery i dojrzały obserwator rzeczywistości, nie brakuje jej poczucia humoru, żartobliwego tonu, ale wiele też tu powagi.
Eseje to szeroki zakres jej zainteresowań i bliskich spraw od literatury i warsztatu pisarskiego po feminizm, prawa człowieka i sprawy środowiskowe, dotyczące zwłaszcza widocznych zmian klimatycznych.

Jedne z najciekawszych esejów dotyczą pisania i pisarzy. Autorka wymienia m.in "naszego" Ryszarda Kapuścińskiego..
Szczególnie czule traktuje kobiety; kanadyjki L.M.Mantgomery i Alice Munro ( ta autorka szczególnie mnie zainteresowała, koniecznie muszę sięgnąć po jej teksty), a także Rachel Carson (amerykańska biolog, autorka książek popularnonaukowych), Doris Lessing, Gabrielle Ray, Marie-Claire Blais, czy cudowna Ursula Le Guin.
Trochę tu genezy jej niektórych, najbardziej lubianych powieści takich jak MaddAddam, Oryks i Derkacz i Opowieści Podręcznej. Adaptacja tej ostatniej to majstersztyk i kamień milowy w walce o prawa reprodukcyjne kobiet. To przestroga, że z trudem wywalczone prawa kobiet, mogą zostać odebrane w każdej chwili.

Ważnym tematem u Atwood są zmiany klimatyczne, marzymy o nieskończoności, tymczasem nasz świat ulega destrukcji. Kryzys ekologiczny to jeden z najważniejszych problemów współczesnego świata.
Dla mnie czas z tą lekturą to dobrze spędzone chwile. Margaret Atwood ma miejsce na mojej półce i ogromnie kibicuję jej w drodze do Nagrody Nobla.
Polecam i zaznaczam, że nie jest to tylko lektura dla fanów Atwood.

[Jen Burrows · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burning Questions is a mixed collection of essays and speeches, composed over the last 17 years. While Atwood covers a range of topics, there are several recurring themes: the art of writing, the environment, retrospectives on Canadian authors. The essays are presented chronologically, which sometimes leads to some oddly juxtaposed pieces, but with the sheer volume of material compiled here it's not surprising that there is quite a bit of repetition too.

Atwood writes with her characteristic wisdom and sly humour, but I can't help but feel this compilation would have benefited from more critical curation. En masse, some of the pieces lose their individual power.

*Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review*

[brisingr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is huge, but 17 hours of it on audiobook felt like the best of times because Margaret Atwood can make any topic entertaining and great. I think it is so rare to find a person with this much clarity of reason and such unwavering voice of change. My love for this author is just monumental.

This collection spans two decades so it is clear the topics are as varied as they can come: from strongholds of Atwood's writing such as environmentalism and feminism, to just beautiful odes to past loves (be they authors read, or people lived) or talks on Shakespeare - I enjoyed every single word in this.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the essays in this collection to be of highly variable levels of interest. Atwood is always smart and funny, but I found myself moving on to new essays without finishing the previous one fairly often.

[Naaytaashreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I receive a free copy of this book for an honest review.
Thank you @definitelyboks for this copy! #pansing

"How therefore do we balance freedom to and freedom from?"

Reading this makes me want to dive into her other collection essays.
Embarrassingly, I have yet to read her other essays. Essays by authors scares me because I feel like I am not intellectual enough to read them.
However, this was an easy, enjoyable read for me.

Margaret Atwood Burning Questions is literally about her answering burning question during different years and reflecting and collecting of the time when she does public speeches, people she met, the happenings during the years and addressing social issues.
It blows my mind when I read topics in 2015, and the issues sadly were still relevant today, or we have yet to find a solution or deal with them.

It was a good balance of telling us the happenings, Margaret telling her own opinions without being too bias for us to force upon us.
Her words made me think, reflect and process those times in a way I see it in a distinct set of lenses.

I enjoy when she mentions authors and books. I list them down to check them out. That's my next mission.
Through the essay, you kind of see her growth, her intellectual mind and her writing.

Essays I enjoy from this:

- From Eve to Dawn
-Polonia
-Somebody's Daughter
-A Writing Life
-Bring up the bodies
- How to change the world
- On Beauty
- We hang by a thread
- What art under trump
- A slave state

"It can all change. it can all stop. The blank page is always pure potential, for everyone, me included. Every time you begin, it's just as frightening and just as much of a risk."