My thanks to the publisher for a review copy of this book, which comprises a selection of speeches, reviews, essays, ruminative thoughts, obituaries and at least one powerfully memorable poem. In five parts, the book covers Atwood’s thoughts about some of the key questions of this century to date, most obviously including the erosion of hard won women’s rights and our complicity in our own possible extinction, but also on a huge range of other topics.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this volume, not least because I have not found her particular sort of speculative fiction very enthralling in the past and have struggled to finish any of her books or even to start some.

She is quite a middle of the road thinker politically - no discernible difference for her between extreme right and left regimes - but she can pack a punch on the environment, particularly when she brings her own particular Canadian background into the discussion. Apart from the punch, her account of childhood holidays featuring her father’s fascination with insect infestations in Trees of Life,Trees of Death is very funny. She is also rather a good feminist to answer the piece entitled ‘Am I a bad feminist’ and she naturally and actively looks to support other women. I appreciate there may be an element of serendipity about her famously prescient thoughts on debt, but I rather enjoyed her engagingly pert and puncturing soothsaying and I think she enjoys adopting that persona too.

She mounts a fierce and coherent defence of how vital are the arts in this book and her passage on why we tell ourselves stories in the face of all our wants is powerful and thought provoking. I like her innate sympathy with the unjustly ignored and downtrodden - be they Caliban in the Tempest or the Penelopiads. Most of all, I enjoyed her accounts of Canadian authors, like Alice Munro, whose amazing stories I love, but also of others I haven’t come across or read.

I do hope this book does not become the stuff of a thousand PhD theses. Read it and see if your summary would improve on four blind men describing an elephant!

• Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories?
• How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating?
• How can we live on our planet?
• Is it true? And is it fair?
• What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism?

These important questions are just a few of the over fifty subjects that Atwood dives into in this eclectic collection of essays and miscellaneous writing that spans nearly two decades. With Atwoods ICONIC wit and storytelling, she's cultivated a collection that is not only immensely entertaining, but thought provoking and wise at the same time. Of course with such a vast array of subjects, this is definitely the type of book you can easily dip in and out of, and you may not find every piece to be of interest, but overall I can say I enjoyed reading the entire collection. It's organised chronologically from 2004-2021, as opposed to by subject matters/similarities.

Margaret Atwood is incredibly knowledgeable; but importantly: she is wise.

Reading Burning Questions was like meeting up with old friends and meeting new ones. Some of the essays I had read before but most I had not yet come across. Either way, there is so much to think about as you read through this collection. I love how she weaves through her love of Shakespeare, the impact of Orwell's 1984, the experience of having written A Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace and Hagseed and Oryx and Crake (All of which, I have read) with her deep concern for the state of the world: the environment, equality and abuse of power.

This is a highly readable collection of essays. I will be dipping in and out of what will be a highly treasured collection from one of my favourite authors.

I highly recommend Burning Questions to all who are intrigued by Atwood or the state of the world in general!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

On the whole very interesting, if a little dry in places, but these are based on lectures, so I suppose that is to be expected. I love her fiction though.

3.5 stars. The problem with almost any collection of essays or stories is that they vary so widely in subject and quality. Some of the essays here I found really interesting, a few I had read before, and yet others I struggled to engage with. As the collection covers so many topics and spans a couple decades of work, it's a mixed bag. But Atwood's writing is consistently good and I enjoyed more than I didn't.

Burning Questions is a mixed collection of essays and speeches, composed over the last 17 years. While Atwood covers a range of topics, there are several recurring themes: the art of writing, the environment, retrospectives on Canadian authors. The essays are presented chronologically, which sometimes leads to some oddly juxtaposed pieces, but with the sheer volume of material compiled here it's not surprising that there is quite a bit of repetition too.

Atwood writes with her characteristic wisdom and sly humour, but I can't help but feel this compilation would have benefited from more critical curation. En masse, some of the pieces lose their individual power.

I studied Atwood at university and of course I have read and watched The Handmaid’s Tale.

Although this is a wonderful insightful collection of essays, I was expecting something different. Possibly questions from readers regarding the Handmaid’s Tale. I was not necessarily expecting essays, which brings my rating down somewhat as it was a free flowing read for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

As a big Margaret Atwood fan I was very excited to read this. Collecting together her essays and lectures from the past 20 years, this book is arranged by time period and tracks the changes we’ve seen, alongside Atwood’s reflection on her own life and childhood. The nature of the collection means that the pieces are hugely wide ranging, but Atwood brings her wisdom, wit and incredibly readable writing style to every topic she covers.

I particularly enjoyed reading about her thoughts on writing The Testaments and the reception to The Handmaid’s Tale.

There’s definitely a lot to appeal to Atwood’s fans in this latest collection, and I would recommend dipping in and out of it and finding the parts which stand out to each reader.

An absolute treat for the mind. I’d read The Handmaid’s Tale many years ago, as part of my English Literature A Level and had great respect for Margaret Atwood from that point. I loved her highly original storyline, but also her great insight and observations into human nature. I’ve since enjoyed her follow up to HMT, The Testaments, plus watched and enjoyed the associated TV adaptations. The chance to ARC these, non fiction, essays was something I therefore jumped at.
This book takes diverse and thought provoking topics and gives the author’s own, unique and intelligent, feelings and take on them and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the essays. It was a real privilege to get to know the author better through her personal and honest thoughts and feelings and she does not hold back even amongst the more demanding and controversial subject areas which was refreshing and humbling. I found I share a lot of her thought processes and ideals and I challenged some of my own preconceived ideas along the way too.
My ARC copy had a few formatting problems, for example certain letter patterns were omitted eg -ff and -th and any numeric values were also missing. This actually didn’t detract too much however, it made it feel as though I was cracking some mystic code to unlock secrets and it was more than worth it. A definite recommend from me.

2.5 rounded up

Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004–2021 collects Atwood's essays, speeches, book forewords and other miscellaneous non-fiction pieces produced of the last 17 years. This latest collection follows Moving Targets: Writing with Intent 1982 - 2004 / Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose, 1983-2005 and Second Words: Selected Critical Prose.

As can be seen from the above wide range of formats of the pieces included, the book covers a number of mediums and a large variety of topics. My own personal preference would have been for these to have been reduced / streamlined in quantity to form a more coherent overall collection - or maybe if they had been presented in a different way, as reading the forewords to a couple of random books in a row and out of context doesn't really appeal to me, and I'd rather the book was more curated or grouped by topic than presented chronologically.

Perhaps one more for the completist Atwood fans among us, but I think I'll probably be sticking to her fiction in the future.

Margaret Atwood, Burning Questions.

A collections of essays, new and old from Margaret Atwood.
The queen of the literary Margaret Atwood brings together a selection of pieces which vary from thought provoking to funny.
Atwood just never misses, she’s electric and unputdownable.

I have been a massive fan of Margaret’s since the late 80s when I devoured her books including the ubiquitous Handmaid’s Tale while at Uni, these essays give a fascinating insight into the workings of her mind and I’m off now to reacquaint myself with Anne of Green Gables!

This is a compilation of Atwood's talks, speeches, book reviews, published forewords and other miscellaneous pieces from around 2000 forwards. What is striking is the sheer range of Atwood's interests and the way she manages to put herself into her words making them both public and personal. The talks and lectures do read as verbal pieces and there are presentational things that we say, that we wouldn't generally write. But everything she turns her hand to is insightful without ever becoming supercilious or know-all-y (despite the fact she really does know an awful lot!) With no soapbox feel, no posturing, no beating us over the head, this is a shared kind of conversation, no matter how urgent the topics. From insider views on her writing and books, to her thoughts on Doris Lessing and Simone de Beauvoir, to the climate emergency and erosion of democracy, Atwood is passionate but balanced, eminently reasonable though incisive, with a keen eye on the intersections between literature and politics.