Zenia is as beautiful as ever. She’s wearing black, a tight outfit with a scoop neck that shows the tops of her breasts. She looks, as always, like a photo, a high-fashion photo done with hot light so that all freckles and wrinkles are bleached out and only basic features remain: in her case, the full red-purple mouth, disdainful, sad; the huge deep eyes, the finely arched eyebrows, the high cheekbones tinged with terracotta. And her hair, a dense cloud of it, blown around her head by the imperceptible wind that accompanies her everywhere, moulding her clothes against her body, fitfully moving the dark tendrils around her forehead, filling the air near her with the sound of rustling. In the midst of this unseen commotion she sits unmoving, as still as if she were carved. Waves of ill will flow out of her like cosmic radiation.

I’ve been meaning to read more Margaret Atwood for years now. Back in 2015, I read The Handmaid’s Tale, which I really enjoyed and would encourage the handful of people left in the world who haven’t read it to do so as soon as possible. Saying that though, I loved this novel way more. We follow three women, Tony, Charis and Roz who are completely different from one another but who are connected by their scarring interactions with a woman named Zenia, who has very recently died. They are out having lunch when Zenia appears in the restaurant, very much alive and well, and the lives they’ve painstakingly rebuilt are shaken up once more.

We learn everything about these women - what has made them who they are when we first meet them and how they are all connected with one another. The book can seem dense when you first realise this is what Atwood is going to do. She takes you right back to each woman’s childhood, telling you what their family was like, the struggles they dealt with growing up, their relationships with men...you come to know these women inside out and I absolutely loved it. Give me a character study any day over a novel stuffed to the seams with plot. I loved spending so much time with each woman individually, and the writing is just phenomenal.

It’s almost 600 pages long but I couldn’t put it down. This book completely won me over - I’ll be reading a lot more Margaret Atwood from now on.