E-Paper
Novelist Margaret Atwood on how she escaped the coronavirus scare
Recently, for the Read A Letter initiative, she shared the story of how she managed to escape the coronavirus scare.
Margaret Eleanor Atwood is one of the most famous novelists of the literary world, who wrote the book, The Handmaid’s Tale, made even more famous by the web series adaptation of it. Recently, for the Read A Letter initiative, she shared the story of how she managed to escape the coronavirus scare.
Atwood spoke about how she managed to give the disease a miss as she had been travelling since January. Her story started with her saying, “Hello, my name is Margaret Atwood and my letter is for friends and family members in distant locations. Thank you for all your messages of concern and support. I am thinking of you too and hoping that everything is going well for you or as well as it can go. Despite the annoyances considered, if we are inside a house, if we aren’t ill, if the kids and grandkids are alright and if we have enough money to get us through, we can consider ourselves lucky. That is far from being true for everyone. And please forgive me for being so late to reply. It is a strange time and I have been having a strange time as well. I just barely missed the big up curve of the virus and a week later I have found myself marooned in a foreign country.”
Atwood added, “It started well in late January, fearing no harm, I set out with my sister and my brother-in-law to attend the Hay Literary Festival in Cartagena, Columbia. When this arrangement was made back in early 2019, I thought that Graeme Gibson (partner) would be with us. I had envisioned getting him to a warm place for February which is the coldest and iciest month in Toronto but as you know he died last September. However, the three of us forged ahead. Anyway, it is a lovely location and true, the festival is or was then very energetic and interesting. Then I travelled on solo to New Zealand and Australia for an 11 city speaking tour with two other people.”
Atwood spoke about the fundraising which she did and also the fact that at that time, the disease had not spread to the countries she was in.
She said, “Was I apprehensive? Increasingly so. As time went on, we can all remember where we were at certain abrupt moments of change. The assassination of Kennedy or 9/11 but the COVID-19 crisis unfolded slowly and so did my awareness of it.”
“By the time I left Perth, Australia at the beginning of March, the virus was still showing a flat line globally,”
Atwood then spoke about going to Galway, Ireland, which had not reported any cases of the novel coronavirus till that point. “I cut it very close. I could see when travelling through an almost deserted Heathrow (airport) on March 10 that things were suddenly getting serious. Fortunately, I had a container of hand sanitisers with me, though it leaked all over me in the plane while I was watching Despicable Me.”
“Once back in Toronto, I went straight into self-isolation as the global curb shot almost straight up and here, I remain socially distancing and with sufficient toilet paper, all-purpose flour, yeast and frozen peas.”
Atwood ended by saying, “Will there be another side to this crisis when we can emerge again and take up normal life? Yes, there will be. But, will normal life be the same as normal life before? No, it won’t. We have been given a pause in which we must consider how we have been living on this planet, what the cost of that is and how we might do things better and why we really need to do them better? There is a good side to this bad moment and if you squint hard, you can almost see it, so long, for now, virtual hugs, wash those hands and keep well. We will be together again, then come to think of it, we are together now just in a different way.”
