Book 87 - Margaret Atwood "Stone Mattress"
Nov. 6th, 2020 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveMargaret Atwood "Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales" (Virago Press)
I enjoyed this collection overall and would recommend it without many reservations.
Stone Mattress starts with a suite of three interconnected stories about a writer, a poet, and the woman who came between them. None of the characters is particularly likable, but Atwood's mischievous sense of humour makes reading about them very entertaining. It's a bit of a theme throughout the collection, that unlikability. Atwood has a spiky tongue when she needs it. She's never mean, though. She's merely observant of human nature and what people are really like under their veneer of civility. And also what their vulnerabilities are beneath their carapace of unlikability.
The theme running through the stories is the difficulty of getting along with other people. More specifically, and as a quote from a review in the Independent newspaper on the cover of the paperback version I read almost says, it's about getting to a certain point in life where there are people in our lives that we'd really rather weren't there, and being prepared to go to the ultimate length for them not to be there any longer. Some of the stories are enigmatic, full of suspense, and you're left not knowing what will happen, but in a wrigglingly delicious way.
My favourite story in the book is the shortest. Lusus Naturae is a funny, bittersweet tale. It didn't need to be longer than its 10 pages. Everything was there. The innocent childhood, the difficult teenage years, the misunderstanding, the inevitable end. I want to quote from it, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it.
It was a nice surprise to re-encounter some old friends from The Robber Bride, in the middle of the collection. I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth brings us up to date with Tony, Roz and Charis in one of the milder stories in the book.
The title story had an unusual effect - it had me rooting for someone about to commit a murder. The final tale in the collection was sobering. An almost dystopia, it speaks of the fate that a lot of people are already facing, and took it a step further. That's something else Atwood does well. At each stage of her life, she distils the world she is experiencing to produce the essence of the things that matter. This collection of stories has a second theme of aging. It examines how to age with dignity, and whether it is necessary or right to address past events. And linked to aging is memory, how it fades as we grow older, and we begin the refrain, "It'll come back to me later," and then begin to wonder whether it's something more.
What I like about Margaret Atwood's short stories is that she understands the format. She knows that it's not for throwaway ideas that might or might not be worked into novels. She understands that the reader still needs to feel drawn in by the story, and satisfied by its ending. Not all writers have the skill to craft a truly good short story, but Margaret Atwood does. Whether it's 50 pages or 10, she gives you everything you need to know to make the story real.
I enjoyed this collection overall and would recommend it without many reservations.
Stone Mattress starts with a suite of three interconnected stories about a writer, a poet, and the woman who came between them. None of the characters is particularly likable, but Atwood's mischievous sense of humour makes reading about them very entertaining. It's a bit of a theme throughout the collection, that unlikability. Atwood has a spiky tongue when she needs it. She's never mean, though. She's merely observant of human nature and what people are really like under their veneer of civility. And also what their vulnerabilities are beneath their carapace of unlikability.
The theme running through the stories is the difficulty of getting along with other people. More specifically, and as a quote from a review in the Independent newspaper on the cover of the paperback version I read almost says, it's about getting to a certain point in life where there are people in our lives that we'd really rather weren't there, and being prepared to go to the ultimate length for them not to be there any longer. Some of the stories are enigmatic, full of suspense, and you're left not knowing what will happen, but in a wrigglingly delicious way.
My favourite story in the book is the shortest. Lusus Naturae is a funny, bittersweet tale. It didn't need to be longer than its 10 pages. Everything was there. The innocent childhood, the difficult teenage years, the misunderstanding, the inevitable end. I want to quote from it, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it.
It was a nice surprise to re-encounter some old friends from The Robber Bride, in the middle of the collection. I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth brings us up to date with Tony, Roz and Charis in one of the milder stories in the book.
The title story had an unusual effect - it had me rooting for someone about to commit a murder. The final tale in the collection was sobering. An almost dystopia, it speaks of the fate that a lot of people are already facing, and took it a step further. That's something else Atwood does well. At each stage of her life, she distils the world she is experiencing to produce the essence of the things that matter. This collection of stories has a second theme of aging. It examines how to age with dignity, and whether it is necessary or right to address past events. And linked to aging is memory, how it fades as we grow older, and we begin the refrain, "It'll come back to me later," and then begin to wonder whether it's something more.
What I like about Margaret Atwood's short stories is that she understands the format. She knows that it's not for throwaway ideas that might or might not be worked into novels. She understands that the reader still needs to feel drawn in by the story, and satisfied by its ending. Not all writers have the skill to craft a truly good short story, but Margaret Atwood does. Whether it's 50 pages or 10, she gives you everything you need to know to make the story real.
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