Going by previous reviews, I should be proud I even got through this book. It wasn't a chore to read, exactly, but it definitely misses a lot of what I like about other Atwood books.

The book follows the perspectives of three people. Nate and Elizabeth are married, but neither of them are happy about it, and they have an agreement to sleep with other people. Nate wants to have an affair with Lesje. Elizabeth is deep in depression because her last affair ended with the guy shooting himself in the head.

I'm not sure what the book was trying to say. There are messages about environmentalism, about life being better off before humans came along, about politics. As the book takes place in Canada in 1976-8, it whooshed right over my head.

I wanted so much to sympathize with someone in this book, to feel like their actions were justified within some semblance of a value system. But if these people had values, or mores, or anything resembling a conscience, I never saw it. Maybe that was the point, but it made the reading experience difficult to stomach. The only character I liked, I don't think I was supposed to, because Elizabeth hated her with a passion I didn't understand. Judging from the text, Elizabeth hated her Aunt Muriel because Muriel tried to instill values in her. It went beyond simply disagreeing with her perspective, though, and she alluded to abuse and maltreatment that I didn't see supported in the text.

The language, itself, is poetry, and, awful plot though it was, it was soothing to listen to on audio. The narrator sometimes took a plaintive, whiny tone for younger characters that irritated me at times, but dialogue was sparse, and most of the prose was long, eye-opening descriptions of a city and buildings I'll never see.

I can't see myself recommending this, except to people who like poetry and enjoy the train wreck effect of watching people make consistently poor decisions. I've consistently disliked books based on the premise of stupidity. I don't think these characters were stupid, exactly, but I do think they were self-destructive and made stupid decisions. So instead of disliking it, I'll just say that it wasn't my favorite of Margaret Atwood's books.

"But what if she discovers the truth? What he suspects is the truth. That he’s patchwork, a tin man, his heart stuffed with sawdust."

As with all relationships, this was not easy. It is not a happy, feel-good read. The story does not leave you with the big answers revealed. It is quite a sad and depressing glimpse into the lives of three equally unhappy main characters: Elizabeth, the CONTROLLING bitch. Nate, the doormat who only comes alive when he is running. And Lesje, who drifts through life, connecting with dinosaurs, not people. As well as being unhappy, all three are unlikable. All three have gravely unfulfilled lives. If they could, honestly, be said to be living. They are a mess, outwardly and inwardly -- even their homes are in a state of disrepair.

At the core of the story is Elizabeth and Nate's open marriage and the ripple effect on everyone involved. You might think, (in a smug, judge-y way) well -- that's the problem right there! But the story has many layers, for Atwood also gives you the backstory of three unhappy childhoods -- and, for some, generations of unhappy families. The dominant character presiding over all is Elizabeth. She is more fully formed than the other two and I think Atwood has done this on purpose. Like her Auntie Muriel, she steamrolls everyone into doing what she wants and how she wants it. She must look like the winner, to the detriment of everyone else. What is left in her wake is the empty, emotionless wreckage. (including herself, as she will see.) As Lesje ruminates near the end of the story, "She could not, she knew, match the almost flamboyant melodrama of Elizabeth's [childhood] ... in any competition for unhappy childhoods she would lose."

As always, there are huge themes tackled but not in a moralizing or in-your-face way. (Atwood is oh-so subtle, oh-so crafty, always brilliant.) Themes of marriage, adultery, mental health, suicide, emotional abuse, self-worth, fulfillment, cultural discrimination, etc, all within the domestic arena. Atwood's writing is always deep and thoughtful (her exceptional intelligence is just too much for my brain!) As I stated earlier, the story did not leave me with the feeling that these characters will live happily ever after. Sadly, our three main characters' relationships seem to be going the route of Lesje's beloved dinosaurs -- the road to extinction. It is unlike anything I have read before and although grim, I am not sorry to have sat with these characters for a little while. After reading one of her books, Atwood makes me feel just a little bit smarter. Just a little bit wiser. This one also made me feel a whole lot better about my life and the lovely people I happily call my family.

Bozuk psikoloji ile okunacak bir kitap degil diye girizgah yaaym.

Elizabeth, Nate ve Lesje arasindaki olaylar orgusu, olay icinde karakterin he birine bolumler verilerek anlatilmis oyle ki bazen karakter karsiniza oturmus da olayi kendi gozunden anlatiyor gibi hissediyorsunuz. Atwood her zamanki gibi detaylari betimlemekteki ustaligini konusturmus ama finali oyle bir birakmis ki sanki yazmaya ara vermis de yarim kalmis hissine kapiliyorsunuz. Finale geldigimde kendimi, "bitemez, bitmis olmamali" derken buldum. Eger sonu ogrenebilseydim daha pozitif bi inceleme yazabilirdim.
Yine de her son bitenin tekraridir bazen diyeyim. Yillar sonra yeniden okumayi dusunecegim kitaplardan biri' belki o zaman farkli bir duygu yakalayabilirim. Bu yuzden simdilik virgl. :)

I love Margaret Atwood but I couldn't stop rolling my eyes at this book. Nate has nothing to recommend himself to any of the women that he's dating/married to. Elizabeth is wantonly cruel to all the women in Nate's life. For a creature of pure logic, where is Lesje's reason to fall in love with Nate after just one date? Then there's William, whose only characterisation involves pink skin mentioned every time he turns up in the book.

Sometimes honest and true. Mostly sad as fuck. Ugh.

Very disappointing novel by Margaret Atwood. It is about romantic relationships and explores a live triangle between a married couple and a lover. Each chapter is from their point of view. I found it completely lacking of depth and I never felt close or relating to any of the characters. In the end, I found it boring and couldn't really get the message or the point of the novel.

My comment on this early work from Margaret Atwood: she got a lot of success for her very innovative writing and there's a reason while some novels established her global success. If this novel is pretty unknown outside her fans, there 's a reason. So Life Before Man is not worth spending any time on.

This book was as squishy as real life. Frustration, solitude, sorrow. Not exactly the escapist reading I was needing. But luscious descriptiveness.

While not Atwood's best, this is a really, really good novel in several interesting ways; narratively, it's great dialogic interplay between three major and another four or five minor characters, as well as serving now as an interesting period piece, given that it was written about sexual and romantic interplay amid the dissolution of a marriage and the decay of the nuclear family that could only have been written, I think, in the mid 1970s, as the sexual revolution peaked and just before the AIDS crisis and the puritan triumph of the Reagan era slammed back into place many of the social mores I think the early, revolutionary Boomers had thought they'd done away with.

Thus I recommend it for the vivid portrait of thirty-somethings unwittingly sabotaging their family, selves, and the lives of others without ever really understanding their own motivations, or being able to control how others will react or act in these romantic and familial situations, as thirty-somethings will so often do when the mid-life crisis strikes. The chapters, which use indirect discourse to move through the minds of three of the major players, are wonderfully balanced, as true and good with the male voice and experience as the two females. Overall Atwood was able to strike a terrific balance between these three voices, one never quite playing full hero/ine or villain, each flawed, lovable, pitiable, and annoying by turns. Even if my own experience of such things came 25 years later, I felt so much of this rang absolutely true. In the end, as Bogey says so pithily in Casablanca "The lives of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Thus, although exquisitely written, the novel falls a tad short of profundity, for me--still, a lot of hard truth and a great portrait of the desperate little lives of those married with children but no longer willing, or no longer able, to play the marriage game.

Didn't really enjoy this one tbqh. I always like Atwood's writing style, which was vivid and poetic here, but it was just a bit grating to read about annoying people making themselves unhappy and then whining about it. The characters can be summed up as all contributing to a miserable situation and then thinking they alone are the victim of all this. None of the characters really develop or change, at least, not in a positive way, but not in some catastrophically negative way either. Reading this novel felt like hanging out with that friend who always makes bad decisions then wants to complain about how shitty their life is.