title: Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose--1983-2005
author:  Margaret Atwood 
description: Atwood is, of course, one of the most famous and prolific Canadian novelists of our time (<i>The Blind Assassin</i>, etc.), and this eclectic collection ably testifies to the scope of her interests and passions. These are occasional pieces, and as such, they form a somewhat odd collection, as when a review of Elmore Leonard's novel <i>Tishomingo Blues </i>is immediately followed by an obituary for a fellow Canadian writer and friend. Atwood has thought long and deeply about the role women have played in the past and continue to play today. But while in the earlier essays she writes of a living revolutionary force that she believed would change the world, the more recent work views the feminist movement as a relic of an earlier time, even if its goals are still forefront in her mind. As responses to specific moments in literary, personal or social history, many of these works don't necessarily deserve to be preserved in perpetuity, but they all skillfully characterize their writer as a woman ravenously curious about the world, witty enough to know her own place in it, fiercely dedicated to language and the art and craft of writing and, even when training a skeptical eye on the world around her, enthusiastic as a child about the very act of living. <i>Agent, Phoebe Larmore.</i><i>(Apr. 19)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: ACCLAIM FOR  
  _Surfacing_
  
  “The depth and complexity of Atwood’s critique of contemporary society are
  stunning.”
  
  — _Ms._
  
  “It is excellent in so many ways that one cannot begin to do justice to it in
  a review. It has to be read and experienced.”
  
  — Margaret Laurence, _Quarry_
  
  “Margaret Atwood is one of the most intelligent and talented writers to set
  herself the task of deciphering life in the late-twentieth century.”
  
  — _Vogue_
  
  “It is quite simply superb. … She writes with the ease of total acceptance,
  from right inside the culture, authenticating our experience, holding up a
  mirror so that the image we get back is not distorted by satire or made unreal
  by proselytizing … but real.”
  
  — _Maclean’s_
  
  “The sophistication of its telling, the power of observation and imagination
  make the book remarkable. … It’s a masterful encounter with the way we live
  now.”
  
  — _Whig-Standard_ (Kingston)
  
  “In this disturbing book, Margaret Atwood has written a fascinating, sometimes
  frightening novel a