From Booklist
Atwood returns to the matter of her wonderful "thematic guide to Canadian literature,"
Survival (1972), in lectures on three particular themes and the ways Canadian writers have treated them. Those themes are the devouring, implacable, direly feminine North as expressed in treatments of John Franklin's disastrous 1840s attempt to navigate a northwest passage to Asia; the impulse of whites to "go native" as exemplified by the naturalist Grey Owl, an Englishman who assumed the identity of a Canadian Indian; and the ice-hearted, human flesh^-eating Canadian Indian monster, the Wendigo. Atwood analyzes poems, songs, and stories on those themes, peppering her presentation with the keen and hilarious witticisms that distinguish her own poems and fiction. Moreover, when in the last lecture she takes up women writers' feminizing of the themes, she discloses strong satiric currents in their work that keep us richly entertained as well as fascinated and informed. If lecturers were all as good as Atwood, chautauqua might come roaring back in popularity.
Ray Olson
Review
"A reader can expect any new book by Margaret Atwood to provide a feast for intellectual and imaginative consumption, and Strange Things...is exactly that...Atwood's style and ideas are evocative and always entertaining...this book was, for me, a delight to read." Quill and Quire
"She is crisply schematic in laying out her material." Toronto Star
"Insightful and sympathetic, the lectures boast Atwood's celebrated sardonic wit." Kitchener-Waterloo Record
"...pithy observations on the state of English Canadian literature...Witty and packed with information, these turn out to be surprisingly good reading, and filled with interesting connections for those of us who happen to live in the North." Whitehorse Star
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.