Fans of Hulu’s Emmy-winning series The Handmaid’s Tale know that it is based off of the dystopian novel of the same name by author Margaret Atwood. Now, Variety reports that her very first novel Edible Woman is to be adapted for television by Entertainment One (eOne). Atwood is prolific author and frequently writes on themes of feminism with an eerie, almost uncomfortable twist (e.g. The Handmaid’s Tale). In the last few years her works seem to have come in vogue as several adaptations of her books have been made. According to Paste Magazine, Netflix adapted Alias Grace for a miniseries while Canada’s CBC TV adapted one of her children’s books Wandering Wenda and Widow Wallop’s Wunderground Washery. Paramount Television along with Anonymous Content also currently hold the rights to her MaddAddam trilogy.
Edible Woman was first published in 1969, but the novel itself takes place in the mid-1960s, right in the middle of the second wave of the feminist movement. Kirkus reviews had this to say about it a year later in 1970:
This is a first novel of genuine style applied to the most ordinary circumstances. . . disconcerting, faintly ominous, and moving with the greatest of ease from the expected to the unexpected. Marian, who works in market research and whom most people consider “abnormally normal,” is about to marry Peter who is unquestionably attractive but just too appropriate. As contrasted with her scatty roommate Ainsley who decides to have a deliberately fatherless baby; or another friend trapped into producing one infant after another; or Duncan, an eclectic-to-eccentric student she meets, almost providentially at times, who is a habitué of laundromats and indulger of fantasies. Her upcoming marriage seems to synchronize with her encroaching revulsion, toward foods–first meats and eggs progressing to the humble carrot as recurring images fuse (ingestion/gestation/death) and finally cause her complete funk into flight.
To make it completely clear, as soon as Marian McAlpin’s boyfriend proposes to her, she slowly loses the ability to eat.
eOne currently holds the global rights to the series as well as all the production rights. Francine Zuckerman of Z Films and Karen Shaw of Quarterlife Crisis Productions have signed on as executive producers.