The tone of the novel very much reminded me of The Bell Jar, except less fatalistic and dark towards the end, more comic and keenly observant. Although it’s her first novel, the narrative is ripe with irony and metaphor, and her language is weathered and deep. In this novel Atwood skilfully analyses various types of relationships between men and women, men and men, women and women, people and society. As she runs off to laundromats and shuffles through museums, Marian is getting closer to the solution of her problem. When Marian meets Duncan, she finds her escape from reality in this phantasmic English graduate, and he - in her. Her elitist fiancé regards her as his doll her job puts her in a category with the kind of women Marian would never associate with. The truth is, Marian herself is being eaten. The eggs are baby chicks spilling out onto her plate. Marian cannot eat because she envisions her food as a living organism. The story follows Marian as she loses the ability to eat, loses grasp with reality, and is consumed by her relationships. This is Margaret Atwood’s début novel, one that established her as a writer of literary realism and feminism.
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