2 of 4 copies available
"If you consider yourself an Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You’ve been missing out.” —The New York Times Book Review, Rebecca Makkai, best-selling author of The Great Believers
Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine—explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood’s characteristic insight, wit and intellect.
The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love—and what comes after.
Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 7, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593666593
- File size: 251615 KB
- Duration: 08:44:11
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from March 6, 2023
Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale) explores love and loss in this brilliant collection that mixes fantastical stories about the afterlife with realism. “Metempsychosis: Or, The Journey of the Soul,” an amusing story of reincarnation, follows a narrator whose soul has jumped “directly from snail to human, with no guppies, basking sharks, whales, beetles, turtles, alligators, skunks, naked mole rats, aardvarks, elephants, or orangutans in between.” “The Dead Interview” features an imaginary interview between Atwood and George Orwell, while in “Wooden Box,” the narrator copes with the death of a longtime partner. Among the entries with a more realist bent are the linked stories that explore the strong bond between Nell and Tig after decades of marriage of. In “First Aid,” Nell and Tig take a course from an emergency responder, which leads them to realize they’d prefer “the illusion of safety” rather than face the facts of mortality. “Better to march along through the golden autumn woods, not very well prepared, poking icy ponds with your hiking pole, snacking on chocolate, sitting on frozen logs, peeling hard-boiled eggs with cold fingers as the early snow sifts down and the day darkens,” Atwood writes, evoking the magic of everyday life. She’s writing at the top of her considerable powers here. -
On audio, Margaret Atwood's new collection of short pieces is a mixed bag, both texts and performances. Many of these entries are less stories than witty finger exercises. Examples: Atwood has a conversation with a post-body George Orwell. Hypatia of Alexandria dryly describes being murdered by a misogynist mob with clam shells. A man comes to realize his wife has the soul of a snail. A teenage girl believes her mother is a witch. Most of the professional performances, particularly Linda Lavin's and Bahni Turpin's, are crisply effective. Less successfully, Atwood performs most of the elegiac Tig and Nell stories herself, including the title story. Psychologically shrewd though she is, her Canadian inflections distract, and some will miss the smooth polish of the trained actors. B.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine -
July 1, 2023
Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale; Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021) delights with her first collection of short stories since 2014's Stone Mattress. Some of the 15 stories were previously in the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, while others are original to this collection. The audio is performed by a full ensemble of stellar narrators, including Linda Lavin, Dan Stevens, Kimberly Farr, Rebecca Lowman, Bahni Turpin, Dawn Harvey, and Allan Corduner. Half of the tales center on the lives of married couple Tig and Nell, as remembered by Nell, who is voiced somewhat awkwardly by Atwood herself. Other stories depart dramatically from the Tig and Nell stories and feature a mix of dystopian science fiction, speculative fiction, grim humor, and fantasy. Despite the considerable talents of the narrators, the collection is not an easy listen, as it requires its audience to shift gears from lyrical reflections on loss and mortality to worlds populated by witches, aliens, and Greek philosophers. Some stories are long enough to be novellas, while others seem almost unfinished. VERDICT Expect many holds; this multifaceted collection should appeal to listeners looking to explore grief, aging, and the intimate bonds between loved ones.--Heather Davidson Maneiro
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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