Payback

Payback – Debt and the shadow side of wealth by Margaret Atwood. Published by Bloomsbury. $35.00




Eminent Canadian writer, Booker and Giller Prize winner, Margaret Atwood adds this latest publication to her wide range of non-fiction and fiction including the thought provoking ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.

Atwood’s motive for the small five section hardback is curiosity.

The first, Ancient Balances, examines the principle of fairness, “without which no system of borrowing and lending could exist” and the history of balances, “those two-sided devices for determining fairness by weighing one thing against another”.

Debt and Sin follows, exploring the connection between the two; Debt as Plot looks at the stories of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Charles Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge; The Shadow Side touches on the nastier forms of debt and credit account balancing and Payback looks at three possible Scrooges, Scrooge Original, Scrooge Lite and finally Scrooge Nouveau – Scrooge coping with the world today.

To discuss issues, Atwood looks back on how her family coped, explains pawn-broking, sayings – “He’s paid his debt to society” and “Crime does not pay and revenge and forgiveness in relation to debt.

Notes, biography, acknowledgements, permissions and an index are also included.

A complex, Interesting read.

© 2008 L Donald
all rights reserved