Margaret Atwood is an author who has always resided on a very high pedestal in my mind because when I was young my mother read several of her books, including The Robber Bride, whose distinct cover illustrated with an eye within a human hand made a permanent mark on my psyche, along with the flying dog from “The Neverending Story.”  As freaked out as I was by the cover, Margaret Atwood felt like a literary cult leader for women because my mom read The Robber Bride with her book club, and I remember all the women gathered in our family room talking about it.  As a result, Margaret Atwood particularly embodies any abstract ideas I’ve ever held about women and reading.  That feeling was only further validated when I read The Handmaid’s Tale during puberty; I can’t really think of a more appropriate book for a girl on the brink of womanhood who is confronting her own new-found fertility, although it is decidedly darker than the more “traditional” pillars of the pubescent literary canon, Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, and so forth.  (A very strage aside, I read Lolita around the same time, and I think the argument could be made that these two novels simultaneously directed my life path towards feminism from a very early age. Moms with daughters take note.)