Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 50 books of fiction, poetry and essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which shared the Booker prize. Old Babes in the Wood is her first collection of stories since then – and since the death of her partner, Graeme Gibson, the same year. Atwood brings her trademark wit and invention to bear on subjects as diverse as a pandemic, cancel culture, female friendship, witchcraft – and cats. At the heart of the book is a sequence of tales about a long-married couple, Nell and Tig, as they look back over a lifetime together and, in Nell’s case, contemplate a future alone.
This feels like a highly personal collection, especially the story in which Nell is coming to terms with life after her beloved Tig’s death. How much of your own life is reflected in their tales of love and loss?
The stories are pretty true to the life we shared and to life since Graeme died. Of course, they are obviously not the whole story – they’re facets of it, snapshots in time.
There’s a wonderful closeness between the couple that endures even after death. Do you think the dear departed ever actually depart?
They don’t really depart in the sense that they remain in the minds of the people who remember them. They may not be around in your physical life any more but they’re in your mental life for ever.
Martha Gellhorn makes a surprise appearance in one story, set during the Battle of Monte Cassino in the second world war. Is she a particular icon of yours?
I don’t have icons as a rule, but I certainly admire Martha Gellhorn. She was tough. That’s not why she’s in the book, though. The character she flirts with and writes to in the story she’s in is pretty much Graeme’s dad, who was a general in the Canadian army. I inherited his library and found a letter from Gellhorn, alongside her report from Monte Cassino, which I reproduced word for word. I got permission from her executor.
You imply they might have been lovers…
We don’t know for sure, but she certainly would not have been impeded by scruples because she had a number of love interests, as everyone seemed to have done at that time.
George Orwell pops up from beyond the grave, too, in a story where you interview him through a medium. Do you think you would have been friends with Orwell if you’d met him in real life?
Probably. I mean, I’d have liked to be and I think we would have agreed on a lot of things. He was a formative influence for me.
Are there any writers apart from Orwell that you would like to talk to through a medium?
Oh, there’s a bunch of them. I am not sure how well we would get on but I was quite riveted by Simone de Beauvoir in the early 60s. I would read her in the bathroom without telling other people I was doing it. Her and Betty Friedan. They were both writing about generations older than mine but I still found them pretty interesting. Anyway, it would be fun to talk to Simone de Beauvoir if we can get her in a good mood because I think she could be quite crabby.
How does it feel to be declared unacceptable in Madison County, Virginia, where The Handmaid’s Tale has just been banned from school libraries by the school board?
I’m not alone in being unacceptable. Toni Morrison and Stephen King are banned, too. It’s supposedly because there is too much sex in our books. So, when are they going to kick out the Bible, because that’s got lots of sex in it? What century are we living in for heaven’s sakes? Really, it’s a show of power. Governor Glenn Youngkin is saying: “We’re in control of this and we’re going to make life very unpleasant for students and librarians.” And the subtext is we don’t actually want our kids to be educated and successful, because one of the biggest factors in whether kids do well in their marks is whether there is a school library with a librarian.
At 83, you are still publishing a book every year. Can you see yourself ever slowing down?
What is this word “ever”? Yes, there’s a ticking clock. You may have noticed. But you keep on until you’re finished, you know? Until you don’t have anything more to say or do. Lying on the beach has never been my idea of a good time. Writers don’t stop, they just keep going like the Energizer Bunny; keep going and then fall over. Having said that, some publishers, if you wrote the telephone book they would publish it anyway, no matter how bad it was, because they think: “We can sell this.” That’s my nightmare. So, I have some trusted readers outside of publishing and their job is to tell me – is this bad? And they will tell me the truth because there’s nothing in it for them not to.
What is the best thing about being in your 80s?
I don’t think you have as much to lose, right? So, you let fly. And that’s not limited to me. I can see Wife of Bath syndrome going on all around me in women my age who are thinking: “I’m not done yet, I’ve had all this life experience and here’s what I have to tell you.”
What books are on your bedside table?
Red Memory by Tania Branigan, which is very good and very instructive. It’s Mao’s Cultural Revolution revisited with all the pain and agony that went with it. Also, The Fall of Robespierre by Colin Jones, a blow-by-blow account of the 24 hours at the beginning of which Robespierre had a head and at the end of which he didn’t. I am fascinated with the French Revolution, which is a kind of template for all revolutions.
Is there a book or author that you always return to?
Am I going to be boring and say Shakespeare? Yes, I am. Shakespeare knew a lot about people and how they’re likely to behave, which is badly, or at the very least not always well. The other thing about him was he didn’t know he was Shakespeare. He wasn’t massaging his image. He was just cranking it out to make a buck and the rapidity with which he cranked it was astonishing. It would have been fun to hang out with him.
• Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood is published by Chatto & Windus (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
