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Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood   {Reviewed by STELLA} If you need good company, look no further than Margaret Atwood’s Burning Questions. Like a popular guest at a dinner party, Atwood’s collected essays (and occasional pieces) 2004-2021 are articulate, forthright (but never overbearing), thoughtful, and of course, witty — some wryly so. The essays are a collection of reviews, forewords to other authors’ books, speeches, and reflections on her own writing. The topics are diverse, but always topical:  feminism, ecology — in particular climate change, democracy, the role of literature and art. This third collection of essays begins in the aftermath of the Twin Towers and ranges over the financial crash of 2008, the Obama years, the advent of Trump, the #metoo movement, and the pandemic. Atwood’s published work of these years includes the 'MaddAddam' trilogy, Payback and The Testaments (on the back of the hugely popular TV series of The Handmaid’s Tale). Also during this time, her partner, Graeme Gibson, was diagnosed with dementia. The foreword she wrote for his Bedside Book of Birds is particularly beautiful and heartfelt (Gibson died in 2019). There are other forewords (such as for Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring) as well as highly observant pieces on authors such as Alice Munro, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Ursula Le Guin. In the area of literature and language, she touches on translation, the roles and responsibilities of the author, the power of language, and the relationship between writer and reader. The essays about her own writing are intriguing, and offer insights into her thinking in retrospect on genre and thematic choices. If, like me, you have read most of her novels, you will find these enlightening. The title Burning Questions reflects the urgency Atwood senses in responding to climate change — we are burning; the need to change the power imbalance towards a more equal society — burn the house down; and her own curiosity — a burning inquisitiveness — as a lover of language and words, people and places. No one essay stands out. As with all collections, some are better or will interest you more than others. This is a collection to wander through and be surprised by a clever turn of phrase, a witty remark, an insightful observation or a forthright call to arms. And you get to be in very good company.