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“Some people were surprised that I continued with the book tour for The Testaments,” Atwood writes. “But ask yourself, Dear Reader: the busy schedule or the empty chair? I chose the busy schedule. The empty chair would be there when I got home.” Their love story runs quietly through the Book of Lives. The pair shared a daughter, Jess, and a life devoted to books, birds, adventures and the environment. Gibson had been diagnosed with vascular dementia and they both knew his time was running out. They made one final trip together to Australia in 2019 – a country they visited as a family many times before. Gibson’s mother was Australian, his father, Canadian; he had spent part of his childhood here and often returned (Atwood wrote much of Cat’s Eye during one of those visits). Together they helped shape Canada’s literary landscape, co-founding the Writers’ Trust of Canada and championing a national literature when few believed one existed. Atwood sees Australia’s own literary rise as following a similar path – a gradual claiming of confidence and identity on a world stage. There were no agents, no festivals, no author tours when Atwood started. “You kind of had to be crazy – or at least a little unstable – to think you could make a living at it,” she says. Today there’s more infrastructure for writers – and far more competition. “People coming out of creative writing schools have inflated expectations,” she says. “They think they’re going to get a six-figure contract as a matter of entitlement. When that doesn’t happen, they’re disappointed. Whereas we were not easily disappointed. Our expectations were quite low. It was a big deal to get your poem published in a little magazine, and if somebody paid me five dollars, that was paid.” Atwood manages to keep up with the kids online – she tweets, posts on Instagram and has her own Substack – though she draws the line at full immersion. ChatGPT? “I don’t have one. I’m staying away from it. I don’t want to be told it’s time for me to commit suicide,” she says. TikTok? “I don’t know how to work it, don’t tell me it’s dead simple … I’m certainly not going to do little dances on TikTok, which seems to be mostly what it is.” Online wormholes? “Oh, all the time, yes.” Phew.
