Welcome to my review of My Evil Mother by Margaret Attwood. I saw this advertised to Kindle Unlimited users, so I borrowed it to have a short view into Margaret Attwood’s writing style.
A bittersweet short story about mothers, daughters, and the witches’ brew of love—and control—that binds them, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments.
Life is hard enough for a teenage girl in 1950s suburbia without having a mother who may—or may not—be a witch. A single mother at that. Sure, she fits in with her starched dresses, string of pearls, and floral aprons. Then there are the hushed and mystical consultations with neighborhood women in distress. The unsavory, mysterious plants in the flower beds. The divined warning to steer clear of a boyfriend whose fate is certainly doomed. But as the daughter of this bewitching homemaker comes of age and her mother’s claims become more and more outlandish, she begins to question everything she once took for granted.
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, went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women, and with the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. ‘Her sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019. It was an instant international bestseller and won the Booker Prize.’
Atwood has won numerous awards including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. 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.
I have never read any of Margaret Attwood’s work, though I have a book in my TBR Mountain that I haven’t got to yet. I have also watched parts of The Handmaidens Tale, which wasn’t for me, but my husband liked it.
This is a great short story; it keeps you engaged throughout, and it is hard to believe it’s a short story as so much is packed into such a short book. It took me just over an hour to read, and I didn’t feel rushed or missing anything. The whole story is neatly packed into a few pages with what I understand to be Attwood’s distinct and clever style.
Set in the 1950s, a teenage girl is told her mother is a witch, and her father is a garden gnome that her mother has turned him into. As a child, she talks to the gnome and asks for things that she usually gets, perhaps an ice cream or similar.
I loved how this spoke to the teenager and mother in me and had me laughing and wondering how much is true!
My favourite quote was, “Some people collect stamps. She collected penises.” She even feeds them!
| Title | My Evil Mother |
| Author | Margaret Attwood |
| Series | N/A |
| Format | AudioBook |
| Page Count | 35 Pages |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Amazon Original Stories |
| Release Date | 1st April 2022 |
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