Linda Leith


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Peggy Who? The Long-Awaited Memoir

Image by David Parkins

January 18, 2026

Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
Margaret Atwood
McClelland & Stewart
624 pages, hardcover, ebook, and audiobook

Margaret Atwood resisted autobiographical writing for years. “That would be tedious,” she says at the beginning of Book of Lives. “You’ve heard the bad joke about the old East Coast fisherman counting fish? ‘One fish, two fish, another fish, another fish, another fish . . .’ So, my ‘literary memoir’ would go, ‘I wrote a book, I wrote a second book, I wrote another book, I wrote another book . . .’ Dead boring.”

What changed her mind?….

Read the complete review on Literary Review of Canada (Jan-Feb 2026)