Life Before Man - Softcover

"Superb, complete -- a splendid, fully integrated work." -- The New York Times Book Review

"A penetrating, wry look at the changes affecting men, women and their family lives -- The book has the acute perceptions and vivid imagery which are the hallmarks of Atwood's writing." -- The Sunday Toronto Sun

"Crisp, carefully ironic, contemporary. Life Before Man offers us three characters of great complexity and roundness -- Atwood has written a novel that is emotionally powerful, intelligent and very adult." -- Ms. Magazine

"Tough poet, clever critic, brilliant novelist, feminist, nationalist, our chief literary heroine -- a superb writer." -- Toronto Star

"Margaret Atwood is a deeply serious writer who is also wildly funny." -- Chatelaine

"Atwood writes with savage humor. Sentences are spare, kept under enormous compression, like a bent bow." -- Esquire

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 Elizabeth's dead lover...and the threat of three lives careering inevitably toward potential catastrophe.