Margaret Atwood’s new “Book of Lives” is subtitled “a memoir of sorts” — and in fact, it’s a venerable sort, a cradle-to-rocking-chair telling of a celebrated life.

Today, most books of this type are produced by movie stars or musicians, while literary memoirs tend to focus on one particularly dramatic or entertaining passage: Mary Karr’s childhood (“The Liars’ Club”), Geraldine Brooks’ widowhood (“Memorial Days”), Molly Jong-Fast’s management of her aging mother (“How to Lose Your Mother”).

There are several parts of Atwood’s life that would have been promising for this treatment — her outdoorsy youth; her rich romantic partnership with writer Graeme Gibson; her bohemian or farming period — but she’s decided to give it to us all at once, perhaps feeling, at 85, that there are time const

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