Synopses & Reviews
Life Before Man vividly portrays three people in thrall to the tragicomedy some call love. Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, they are forced to make drastic choices - after the rules have changed and the boundaries have become faded. There is Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, who seeks solutions in the wrong men; Nate, wry and gentle husband of Elizabeth, racked by an inability to decide; and Lesje, quiet and inexperienced, who prefers dinosaurs to most men. Hanging over all of them is the ghost of Elizabeths dead lover…and the threat of three lives careering inevitably toward potential catastrophe.
From the Hardcover edition.
Review
“Excellent…Atwood at her best.” Atlantic Monthly
Review
“Atwood is a wordchild with the gift of tongues, puns, echoes, and symbols.…” The Times (U.K.)
About the Author
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939, and grew up in northern Quebec and Ontario, and later in Toronto. She has lived in numerous cities in Canada, the U.S., and Europe.
She is the author of more than thirty books - novels, short stories, poetry, literary criticism, social history, and books for children.
Atwoods work is acclaimed internationally and has been published around the world. Her novels include The Handmaids Tale and Cats Eye - both shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Robber Bride; Alias Grace, winner of the prestigious Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy, and a finalist for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize and a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her new novel is Oryx and Crake (2003). She is the recipient of numerous honours, such as The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence in the U.K., the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature in the U.S., Le Chevalier dans lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and she was the first winner of the London Literary Prize. She has received honorary degrees from universities across Canada, and one from Oxford University in England.
Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson.
From the Hardcover edition.
Reading Group Guide
1. Of the novel's three narrators, whose voice do you find the most compelling? The most reliable? Sympathetic? Whose story is this? What might be Atwood's purpose in offering us three protagonists?
2. Suicide — considered, attempted, and committed — is the spectre that haunts this novel. Chris, Caroline, Elizabeth's mother, Nate's mother, Martha, Lesje, and Elizabeth each consider, if not act on, suicidal impulses. Discuss the role of suicide in the novel. What are its repercussions and consequences?
3. Anton Chekhov has written of his own work that "I have not introduced a single villain nor an angel, although I could not refuse myself buffoons." Consider this statement in light of this novel: Who are the buffoons? Has Atwood created any angels? Villains?
4. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth is the character most likely to take control of situations and instigate change. Yet when her marriage is on the verge of collapse, Elizabeth refuses to leave, forcing Nate to make the ultimate break. Why does she choose to be abandoned rather than leave? Is there power behind her seeming powerlessness? Action in her refusal to act? What do you make of her strategies?
5. Consider the "phone tree" that exists between Elizabeth, Martha, Lesje, and Nate's mother. What purpose does it serve? How does the phone tree affect Nate? Does his awareness of its existence change his actions? The nature of his relationship to each of the women?
6. Does Atwood ever take a moral position during the course of the novel? Where do you think her sympathies lie? Where do yours? Do they change as the novel progresses?
7. Lesje often reiterates her fear that she is disappearing and becoming a cipher. At these times, she retreats into her dinosaur fantasies. What does her dinosaur world offer her that her real life can not? What catalyzes her inability to conjure up her fantasy world? How do you interpret this cessation?
8. "It's hard to renounce tribute from those who once willingly paid it; hard not to exact," muses Elizabeth. Throughout the novel, parents and children, husbands, wives, and lovers all strive alternately to renounce and exact love, duty, and forgiveness from one another. Can such elusive emotions withstand commodification? What happens as a result?
9. Atwood inserts several instances of sex-related violent activity: William's rape of Lesje, Elizabeth's frantic sex with the underwear salesman, and Martha's beating of Nate. What is the purpose of these interludes? What impact do they have on the characters?
10. Elizabeth is devastated to learn that her mother, during a time of hardship, essentially sold her and her sister Caroline to Auntie Muriel. Yet Elizabeth and Nate find themselves similarly jockeying their daughters between them during the course of their separation. How does the divorce take its toll on the family? How and why does Elizabeth's relationship to her daughters change? How does Nate's? Lesje's?
11. "It's hard to believe that such a negligible act of hers can have measurable consequences for other people ... [Lesje]'s not used to being a cause, of anything at all." Among her characters, Atwood sets a veritable Rube Goldberg machine of action and consequence, cause and effect into motion. What becomes of each character's free will and choice when each of their actions irretrievably affects the lives of others?
12. Discuss the use of paleontology as an ongoing metaphor throughout the novel, and its parallel to the evolution of familial and romantic relationships.