Lady Oracle

This wasn't the best Margaret Atwood book I have ever read. That would be a toss up between The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace. However, I did enjoy parts of it and parts of it really hit close to home. Joan Foster is a Canadian writer who has written one very successful book of poetry and a number of Victorian gothic romances under the name of Louisa K. Delacourt. She is married to a...more

This wasn't the best Margaret Atwood book I have ever read. That would be a toss up between The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace. However, I did enjoy parts of it and parts of it really hit close to home. Joan Foster is a Canadian writer who has written one very successful book of poetry and a number of Victorian gothic romances under the name of Louisa K. Delacourt. She is married to a rather unsuccessful revolutionary who is probably bipolar and had an affair with an artist who calls himself the Royal Porcupine. As a child and young girl Joan was very overweight but her Aunt Lou (the real Louisa K. Delacourt) left her some money in her will on the condition she lose 100 pounds. When she did so she used the money to go to London, England where she became the mistress of a Polish count. So Joan has had a number of existences and has mostly been able to keep them separate. However, a blackmailer has discovered her many secrets and asks for money and sexual favours. To escape all this Joan fakes her death and flees to Italy. Multiple personalities seem to be quite common around Joan. Her father was an assassin during World War II but on his return to Canada he becomes an anaesthetist and brings attempted suicides back to life. Paul, the Polish count, doubles as Mavis Quilp the author of nurse romances which gives Joan the idea for her own writing. Even Arthur, her husband, is a different personality depending on which phase of the bipolar disease he is. At the end Joan faces the prospect of returning to Canada and owning up to her past but she remains in Rome for a while so it is unclear if she will really do so. I suspect many people have contemplated escaping from their lives at one time or another. If so, Lady Oracle should be a cautionary tale about how difficult it is to do so. But is honesty the best policy? Surely sometimes it is wiser to draw a veil over past indiscretions and go on with life. It didn't work all that well for Joan but maybe for another person it would. It's an interesting conundrum.   hide