|
THE FAT LADY DANCES: MARGARET ATWOOD'S LADY ORACLE
Margery Fee
Reviewed by Alan Thomas
Volume 22 Number 4
A handy brief monograph in ECW Press's inexpensive critical series for senior secondary students, this book provides a chronology of the author's life, an eighty-page treatment of the text, and an annotated bibliography and index. It is quality criticism at a low price. The novel is one of Margaret Atwood's most approachable pieces for high school students (and post-secondary students too), given its personable heroine and its arch play on gothic romance. The style of Margery Fee's study (beginning with the title) indicates a friendly willingness to appeal to that readership. Although the literary treatment is divided somewhat pompously into "Importance of the Work," "Critical Reception" and "Reading of the Text," there are within many subheadings to isolate special features of the story--into scenes, characters, themes. These divisions break the prose-mass of the page and nudge the young reader along various paths of analysis. Fee's writing is lively and she is able to exploit ECW Press's penchant for division and subdivision by providing a stream of eye-catching heads, such as "Stalked by Love and Lady Oracle as Gothic." This attractive book could serve as an excellent first use of support or secondary material for literature students beginning to handle sophisticated texts on their own. Alan Thomas teaches literature at Scarborough College, University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario
The materials in this archive are copyright © The Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission Copyright information for reviewers
|
