Memoirs

The major new book from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale

'She's taken our times and made us wise to them' ALI SMITH
'She's Margaret Atwood and she can do anything' ANN PATCHETT
'She saw it all coming' TIME
'The outstanding novelist of our age' **SUNDAY TIMES

Immerse yourself in the creative universe of Margaret Atwood for a riot of life, art and everything in between:** the greatest writer of our time tells her own story

Raised by scientifically minded parents, Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec: a vast playground for her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother. It was an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful.

From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would become Cat’s Eye to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.

**As she explores her past, Atwood reveals more and more about her writing, the connections between real life and art – and the workings of one of our boldest imaginations.

** THE ULTIMATE GIFT FOR ALL THE MARGARET ATWOOD FANS IN YOUR LIFE ****

The hotly anticipated literary debut by SELF ESTEEM

'An oracle'
DOLLY ALDERTON

'Articulate[s] a universal, feminine wisdom with such ferocity it feels like she's slapping the reader around the face'
OBSERVER

'Equal parts self-lacerating, tender and witty'
GLAMOUR

'Furious, sharp, funny, honest'
iPAPER

Sometimes when I drink wine out of a globulous glass with the thinnest of rims, blocking out the fact it's billed at £14 a pop, I think of baby Becky.

Hair so blonde it's neon white, cheeks so chubby you can't see her eyes. What must she think right now? She must think she made it.

We're a great big adult person.

That was always the plan, right?

In her extraordinary debut, with her trademark lyricism and razor-sharp wit, Ivor Novello Award-winning musician and artist Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka SELF ESTEEM) takes us on a journey through womanhood - whatever the hell that means.

Through the notes, lyrics and biting observational prose for which Taylor has become renowned, A Complicated Woman offers itself up as a subversive anti-Bible for any woman who has ever cracked under the weight of impossible expectation; who has done unto others the damage that has been wrought upon her; and who has discovered deep within herself a resilience that surprised her.

A Complicated Woman is a cathartic scream of a book that gets to the heart of being a woman in the world today, and cements Taylor as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.

A 50th anniversary celebration of the nation's beloved sitcom