Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales

Once upon a time, I joked that Margaret Atwood could write about a walk to the grocery store in such a way that it became a dangerous, harrowing, terrifying experience that prompted readers to question every aspect of the universe. Such a walk could lead to a deep examination of every facet of the human experience, and in analyzing our collected data, we would find ourselves severely lacking. Anyone we passed on the three block walk to the store would make us hyper aware of our flaws, our shortcomings, with every mistake we've ever made reflected back at us in any accidental eye contact. The sense of alienation these (possibly) unfriendly faces would provoke would be almost crippling. I thought this was an amusing exaggeration of the way that Margaret Atwood could turn even the most mundane situations into compelling prose. However, in "Alphinland", the first story in Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood's first book of short fiction since 2006's Moral Disorder, she does exactly this.

Early on in this first story, she asks: "But how can you have a sense of wonder if you're prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be."

And yet, one gets the sense while reading through these nine stories -- and indeed, any of Atwood's work -- that nothing can phase her. She is prepared to write about anything, from an old woman's walk through the snow to the store -- an adventure that rivals any of Farley Mowat's tales of the Canadian North -- to a chillingly calculated murder ("Stone Mattress"), with the same focused intensity and dry wit that are synonymous with her name. Atwood is an almost preternaturally consistent writer -- her name on the cover of a book is sort of the literary equivalent of a Michelin sticker on a restaurant window -- but Stone Mattress is particularly good, even by her standards. Atwood has quipped "I'm not prolific, I'm just old." She may not be Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates, but with 14 novels, 8 short collections, and numerous volumes of poetry and and non-fiction under her belt, she's certainly no slacker, and sustaining this level of quality over such a long career is an astonishing feat.

I've reviewed Margaret's work several times (including last year's bizarre and wonderful MaddAddam: http://geeksout.org/blogs/ranerdin/book-review-maddaddam ) and I've struggled each time to describe what makes her prose so compelling. "Haunting" is an adjective that is used so often that it has lost all meaning. But there's something Atwood does that no other author can do -- she has an unmatched way of not only finding the grotesque and bizarre in life's most mundane situations, but also the much rarer and much more underrated opposite skill of finding the mundane and the ordinary within the grotesque and bizarre. The end result has a way of equalizing and normalizing anything within these pages from attending the funeral of a former lover to, well, plotting the brutal murder of a former lover.

Granted, as brutal as some of Atwood's narrators are, those who become the targets of their ire and ill-will are rarely any better and often a great deal worse. A lot of authors tend to write the same sorts of characters over and over again, but Atwood's women have always been incredibly varied, if all somewhat damaged or on the verge of unraveling. There's a hardness and an edge to the women in this collection, most of whom fit nicely among the book's dichotomous title. A genetic abnormality leads a town to mistake one woman for a vampire in "Lusus Naturae", which gives shades of Lovecraft's "The Outsider" in the best possible way. "I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth" revisits characters from 1993's The Robber Bride and gives the very pleasant sensation of dropping in with three old friends you haven't seen in a long time -- and provides a nice respite in the middle of some of the book's darker tales. Fans of that novel, go buy a copy of Stone Mattress immediately.

Atwood has always been able to write convincingly from multiple female perspectives -- The Robber Bride should be taught in schools as an exercise in this -- but here she employs several men with the task of narration as well. These are men past their expiration dates, holding onto life the way they hold onto their women: with cold, stubborn brutishness, attached for reasons lost in antiquity and more from capricious habit than any genuine esteem or affection. In Revenant, we see what Lord Byron may have become had he lived long enough for his famous appendage to cease functioning, as Atwood explores the link between creative and biological impotence. The Freeze Dried Groom allows us to get inside the head of the kind of man you would hear making polar vortex jokes about his wife's vagina last winter. The Dead Hand Loves You introduces us to a frustrated writer and becomes a cautionary tale of a creative "nice guy" gone wrong (Stephen King, please read this). Most of the men are weak, pathetic, and inconsequential, just like most men in real life.

Atwood has been accused of being one-sided in her depictions of men, but there is some room for compassion here. In "Dark Lady" , the last of the three Alphinland stories (I would have read a whole novel of these), a gay poet cares for his flighty and somewhat insufferable twin sister. "Torching the Dusties" closes out this collection with a surprising and strangely touching bit of masculine gallantry (such chivalry may be the result of early onset dementia, but that doesn't matter. Remember, this is Margaret Atwood we're talking about, not Jackie Collins.) And, while we certainly sympathize with the cold blooded murder that a woman plans for her rapist in the book's title story, I think Stone Mattress is a great sampling of all kinds of pathos, in both genders, without any transparent agenda. Critics can never seem to write about women without accusing them of the ghastly crime of being women. If men seem victimized in this collection -- well -- good.

I may be making this collection sound heavier than it actually is. In fact, there is actually a great deal of fun and whimsy in these tales, albeit of the sardonic Atwoodian kind. There's a sense of wickedness to the whole thing, and I sense that Margaret Atwood had a great deal of fun while writing these stories. There are times that Stone Mattress feels like watching an author at play, though in the vaguely menacing way that watching a cat play with a ball of string can easily lead a certain type of brain (mine, for example) to imagine the same cat rending its claws through living flesh instead of yarn.

Atwood's voice is one of the most distinct and recognizable in contemporary fiction -- I could pick any paragraph of hers out of an anonymous lineup, even at the end of whatever bottle I was drinking that probably prompted me to think such a game would be fun in the first place. Her use of first person narration and mastery of the present tense have this strange almost claustrophobic effect of making her characters seem like prisoners trapped inside their own minds. The narrator is slave to and at the mercy of both internal and external forces and, particularly in this collection, the forces of their own bodies and the betrayals of age. And yet, paradoxically, it's precisely Atwood's iron clad control over her prose that allows her to so effectively and so effortlessly (though I'd imagine that the effortlessness is largely an illusion) make us feel like at any given moment we are able to be destroyed, whether by our own bodies or the random chaos of the world around us. The horror fan in me would love to see an Atwood-penned Final Destination sequel, though I suspect the result of such a project would be traumatizing to the viewer.

Atwood is in possession of the same toolbox of nouns, verbs, and adjectives that all writers have. However, she keeps her tools so maintained and so sharp that she is able to apply a light touch and use two or three words when other writers might use five or six. A staunch environmentalist, Atwood wastes no paper in these tales -- every single word is important, every single word counts and has a job to do. There is nothing frivolous here. In this sense Atwood is the one true daughter of Shirley Jackson, and although she is better known for her novels, these stories show that she can do pretty much anything.

I strongly urge those of you that are only familiar with Atwood through The Handmaid's Tale or the Maddaddam Trilogy to delve a bit deeper into the rest of her canon, and Stone Mattress is as good a place to start as any. It's a slim volume and left me desperate for more, but there isn't a weak link in any of these nine stories. By turns hilarious, terrifying, giddy, somber, gentle and brutal, there is a lot packed into this short book, and, as always, Atwood continues to prove that she is a master of all styles and genres. Rating: A

@robrussin

You have to love Margaret Atwood. She writes so well, on so many subjects, and in much of her work, you just don't see it coming.

These stories are almost all about growing old, and in some cases, things that you do when you're younger that eventually catch up with you - maybe dozens of years later. The first three stories are about just that - a group of people who meet while working at a coffee house many years ago, had affairs with each other, and then meet up once more when on of them dies. In the first one, "Alphinland," the heroine is a recently widowed writer who has become famous as the originator of a video game, which she has made into fantasy novels and movies - a sort of J. K. Rowling.

The next two stories tell of the other characters in the coffee house, who've achieved some fame as artists, and who went their own ways until now. Other stories are just as good.

Margaret Atwood excels in describing people's thoughts, even when they're not mirrored by their actions. She can be vicious and hilariously funny at the same time - here she is, describing the black hair of a woman in her seventies who has added a white stripe and a small area of red: "The total image was that of an alarmed skunk trapped in the floodlights after an encounter with a ketchup bottle."

I really enjoyed reading this book after my encounter with Atwood's MaddAdam. All of these stories are definitely worth your time.

Nine wonderful tales.

All but one ("Lusus Naturae") focus on the horrors of aging. In a way they are all grim, but many are also hilarious.

All are really lovely, but my favorites are the first three, which are a trilogy. Each focuses on one character in a long-ago triangle, who now re-meet in old age. As always, the characterization is razor-sharp and biting, yet also quite sympathetic.

The last tale in the book, "Torch the Dusties," is both horrifying and thought-provoking. It's about a near-future movement to destroy rich people living in sumptuous assisted-living places. This is shocking--the motto of the insurgents is "torch the dusties," meaning burn the oldsters to make way for the young--but also intriguing. Echoes of the French Revolution abound. The oldsters are not at all horrible, just oblivious to the way their riches have deprived others, even deprived them of a future.

There is also a story ("I Dream of Zenia, With the Bright Red Teeth") that follows up Atwood's novel "The Robber Bride." This also features a reacquaintance, in old age, of 3 of the principal characters of that book. As always, the shadow of the notorious Zenia, the villain but also the hero of that book, hangs over and illuminates everything.

Super collection.

In her afterward, Margaret Atwood tells us that these are stories about stories. While a fair description I think a better one might be that these are tales about tales we tell ourselves. With the exception of two of the nine stories in this collection these are tales from an elderly viewpoint with the main characters well within striking distance of their final years. Indeed same characters do cross this life with one final tale coloring their vision. The age of the majority of characters may be a challenge to some readers, I could understand but not necessary empathize as thoroughly as my parents might be able to with these stories.

These are not merely tales within tales but often a third layer of memories or ideas that the viewpoint character is juggling within the narrative. Normally this might be confusing but Atwood does a very good job of laying out the various levels of reality that the reader can understand where they should and feel overwhelmed when it serves the purpose.

Contrary to what you might expect if you've read "The Handmaiden's Tale" or the MaddAdams trilogy, these are not science fiction though one borders on fantasy. These tales are more mystery and horror though not gruesome in any sense. Several have twists at the endings and only one really disappointed me right at the final turn. Most have open endings that leave the reader to fill in the the final actions in their mind.

Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood is a book of fictional short stories (tales) on the miseries and horrors of aging. It is powerful, depressing and unforgettable.
The first three stories are interrelated and satirize aging writers. Gavin Putnam the aging poet appears in each story. Alphinland land is a story of an old woman, Constance Stewart who is an acclaimed fantasy writer about Alphinland who dated Putnam. Revenant, the next tale focuses on Gavin Putnam degenerating in his home with a young wife and a visiting fan. The third tale Dark Lady is about an eccentric aging pair of twins Marjorie and Martin. Marjorie was dating Gavin and goes to his funeral.
Lusus naturae is the weakest of the group. The freeze-dried groom is a bazaar story of a con man who's wife wants a divorce and he rents space and finds an entire wedding party in the space he rented including a dead groom. Xenia with the bright red teeth is about some elderly friends, also not one of my favorites.The Dead Hand Loves you, is a satire about a horror writer. The first three stories satirized the female fantasy writers, and dirty old male poetry writers. The Dead Hand Lives You is a satire on horror writers and is right on if you read horror books. Finally The last two stories are the strongest. Stone Mattress, the titular story and taking the name from stromatolites , stroma, being a mattress in Greek coupled with root word for stone, this is an exquisite tale of revenge, not unrealistic either in many ways. What bob did to verna is not uncommon. There is a vicarious thrill in observing Verna take her revenge from someone who wronged her bitterly. The last story Torching the dusties is last for a reason. It is about one woman living in a nursing home blind from macular degeneration. It is the purposeless miserable plight of the sick old people that is dealt with here.
I recommend this book to older people, who are not afraid to read about the sadder and more terrifying aspects of aging. I am older and this was my first Margaret Atwood book. I am haunted by this book and will never forget it.

Stone Mattress is stunningly good, old-fashioned storytelling. Margaret Atwood delivers on what she's known for: wonderfully etched characters that feel like real people with lived-in lives. In her latest collection, Atwood etches her characters in stone and ice.

Take for example the title story. We meet Verna, the personification of the cold 'black widow,' who nevertheless manages to make her serial husband-killings sympathetic and reasonable, as if they were an innocuous knitting hobby. Verna is on a cruise in the Arctic, casing out her next conquest and making acerbic, biting observations of the people she meets. She hones in on one prospect, who turns out to be someone from her past, someone who humiliated Verna and who set Verna on her dark path. Verna is very typical of the characters in Stone Mattress. She carries emotional scars from her youth, hardened moments of trauma that play out in some devastating way in later life.

The term 'stone mattress' comes up fittingly in the Verna story. A young scientist is giving a lecture on fossilized rock formations called stromatolites. He explains: "the word comes from the Greek stroma, a mattress, coupled with the root word for stone. Stone mattress: a fossilized cushion, formed by layer upon layer of blue-green algae building up into a mound or dome. It was this very same blue-green algae that created the oxygen they are now breathing."

A running theme through all the stories is how important early experiences are. They can build up over time like fossils—a kind of inner stone mattress—hardened and preserved. But rather than weigh down characters like baggage, they propel characters to action, and spark—often murderous—impulses. Only Atwood can derive such storytelling verve in the stew of bitterness.

I also admired the sardonic look at old age. Most stories in the collection feature protagonists in their golden years. There is no 'going gently into the good night' for the elderly here. They battle physical and mental decrepitude, ostensible threats, as we see in "Torching the Dusties," and threats that are more emotional like memories of trauma or lost loves and old flames that continue to haunt, as in "Alphinland."

In the "Dusties" story, we meet Wilma who lives in a retirement community sometime in the near future. Wilma is going blind from macular degeneration and also suffers from a hallucinatory syndrome where she sees little figures who dance around the edges of her vision. Contrasted against this miniaturized grotesqueness is the real-life grotesqueness of a militant activist group. These activists protest outside of hospitals and senior citizen homes, carrying ominous signs that declare "Time to Go." A generational war that pits the young against the old? Only Atwood can pull it off as a well-paced thriller, all seen through the eyes—ironic because she's going blind—of Wilma.

Another standout tale in the collection is "The Dead Hand Loves You," a homage to horror, B-movie camp, built around a story-within-a-story framework. "The Dead" is actually the title of a best-selling novel written by the protagonist while he was struggling to make rent in college. To help him out financially, his three flatmates agree to buy shares of his novel in exchange for rent money. The author agrees too willingly and soon regrets the deal when the novel becomes a runaway hit. Decades later, the novel continues to be a cash cow. During this time, the author stews in his resentment of his former housemates. He grows to hate them for lawyer-ing up, for taking a large chunk of his money, and making him adhere to a contract he always thought of as a joke. This built-up acrimony leads him to some drastic action.

Only one story left me unsatisfied at the end, "The Freeze-Dried Groom." The fate that awaits the drug running antiques dealer in this tale was just too ambiguous.

Overall, the stories in Stone Mattress are wickedly sharp and intimate, and filled with dark, chilling humor. It's a fun read. It veers into B-movie camp in some places, goes gothic in others, and offers a dash of meta fantasy in some.

My very first paper in a graduate-level English class, almost 20 years ago now, was about a handful of Margaret Atwood short stories dealing with pregnancy and birth. Having read THE HANDMAID'S TALE as a teenager, I was fascinated to read more of her evocative, often fantastical takes on feminism in fiction. I've read a lot more of Atwood's fiction since then, of course, and it's been a pleasure to see her work evolve over time, including new genres and new ideas as she's evolved as a writer and I've matured as a reader. Now, in STONE MATTRESS, Atwood brings together nine stories that illustrate her exploring new themes even as she revisits familiar ones.

Actually, as Atwood mentions in an author's note, the stories collected here should more properly be called "tales," since "calling a piece of short fiction a ‘tale’ removes it at least slightly from the realm of mundane works and days, as it evokes the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago teller of tales." Like the tales of old, the stories collected here remove readers from the everyday, often introducing elements of surprise and wonder into their narratives.

Only three of the stories collected here have appeared in print before. The title story, "Stone Mattress," was featured in the New Yorker and, according to Atwood, began as an oral story she told to fellow travelers on an adventure excursion in northern Canada, one that bore (hopefully not too much) resemblance to the trip described in the book. Another previously published story was written as an opportunity to revisit characters from Atwood's novel, THE ROBBER BRIDE,and another (probably the most amorphous story of the bunch) was published in a McSweeney's collection of strange tales edited by Michael Chabon.

But even those familiar with these stories will find plenty more to discover here. Atwood's collection opens, for example, with a set of three loosely linked stories, all illustrating the advance of age and the lingering regrets of youth. In the opening story, "Alphinland," an older woman who has experienced surprising success with her creation of a fantasy series comes to terms with the death of her husband, all the time remembering an earlier love affair with a poet who questioned her talent. In the second story, we meet that poet, Gavin, now an old man himself, bristling at the controlling actions of his much-younger wife and the attentions of a young interviewer, who, it turns out, is actually more interested in the creator of Alphinland than she is in the poet. And in the third story, "Dark Lady," we meet Gavin's erstwhile muse, who encounters Gavin's other lady loves at the poet's funeral.

Some stories, such as "The Freeze-Dried Groom," offer unsettling imagery. Others, like "The Dead Hand Loves You," participate in Atwood's seeming interest in the passage of time. Throughout, her wry voice and out-of-the-blue humor are evident. STONE MATTRESS would serve as an excellent introduction to Atwood's work for readers new to her fiction, or at least to her short fiction. For those who have already come to know and love her work, it demonstrates the breadth of her talents and the depth of her thoughtful exploration of topics and themes.

Reviewed by Norah Piehl

Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood is a very highly recommended collection of 9 tales from an extraordinarily adept writer who has stunning insights into the human psyche.

It's always been a pleasure to read Atwood's novels so I have been looking forward to her latest collection of short stories, or tales, Stone Mattress. Unabashedly, I loved this collection. The tales mainly feature aging characters, with one exception. The first three stories are linked through the characters. Several of the stories feature aging writers.

Alphinland - Constance is a writer whose recently deceased husband's voice guides her through her day. She also reflects about Gavin, an ex-lover from her youth.
Revenant - Gavin, a pretentious, curmudgeonly elderly poet is disgruntled with life.
Dark Lady - We meet Jorrie, a former lover of Gavin.
Lusus Naturae - "When demons are required someone will always be found to supply the part, and whether you step forward or are pushed is all the same in the end."
The Freeze-Dried Groom - A man finds a corpse in a storage locker he has bought.
I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth - Three friends discuss life and their interconnected past misadventures.
The Dead Hand Loves You - An older writer who sold shares of his first book when young resents the three friends involved.
Stone Mattress - A woman meets her rapist from 50 years ago and plots her revenge.
Torching the Dusties - An elderly nursing home resident has lost her sight and must rely on a friend to guide her.

Don't let the theme of elderly protagonists prevent you from picking up this collection. Atwood is intelligent, politically and socially astute, and a superlative writer. In other words, Margaret Atwood rocks. This is a short story collection that should not be missed.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday for review purposes.

Having not read Margaret Atwood before, I didn’t know what to think. She provides highly introspective characters, either a bit off “What we call” normal, or just plain weird. What’s in each person’s head is not necessarily what they share, sometimes way off. In fact each person had a secret.
Most of her characters were elderly and come struggling to come to grip with this fact. You can see where some who once considered themselves as cutting edge, suddenly not being quite relevant any more. While I found this interesting maybe a younger person would not.

At first I wasn’t quite sure whether I liked her stories or not, but they grow on you. The first 3 were different people from the same narrative. The wrap up was well done. The rest stood alone. The last one, the main character lived in an independent living facility and was mostly blind with Charles Bonnet syndrome. As this used to describe my mother, I found it peculiarly interesting. However her twist on that, was hopefully unlikely to happen. But, you never know.
Overall, the stories were a walk within a very unique mind.

In her afterword, Margaret Atwood describes this book as a collection of nine 'tales', evoking “the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago teller of tales”. She suggests that while the word 'story' can cover true life or realism, 'tales' can only be seen as fiction. Hmm...this seems like a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free card to allow the author to make her characters dance to the puppeteer's strings rather than attempting to invest them with a feeling of emotional truth, but then I'm not a huge fan of the trend towards mimicry of folk tales in general. Certainly the tales that worked best for me in this book were the ones where, regardless of the fantastical elements of the plots, the characters' thoughts and reactions came over as 'real'.

There's a general theme through most of the tales, not so much of ageing itself, but of elderly people reviewing episodes in their youth and of the reader seeing how their lives were affected by them. Most of the time those episodes involve failed romantic or sexual relationships and, while as individual stories they are for the most part interesting, I found, as I often do with collections with such a strong theme running through, that it became a little repetitive and tedious after a while.

The quality of the prose, however, is excellent and, taken alone, some of the stories are highly entertaining. Perhaps in line with Atwood's desire for these to read like folk tales, there's something of a detached feeling about the narrative voice in many of them – a glibness that takes on an almost sneering tone at times, leading, I found, to a distance between reader and character which effectively prevented me from feeling much emotional investment in their fates. To compensate, many of them are clever and imaginative, and some of the characterisation is excellent even when the emotional response to them is absent.

The collection kicks off with three linked tales, telling of a long-ago broken love affair from the perspective of the woman, the man and the 'other woman' respectively. The first of these, Alphinland, is one of the most successful in the book, with a beautifully-drawn picture of an elderly woman struggling to recover from the grief of losing her husband by a kind of active retreat into the world she creates in her own fantasy novels. Despite the fantastical elements to this tale, there is genuine warmth here as the central character faces up to the necessity of taking on tasks that had always been seen as the responsibility of her husband. Although there's a lot of humour in them, the other two tales in the trio don't work quite so well, as the fantastical elements that were done with a lot of subtlety in the first are handled more crudely, and what was left ambiguous is made a little too clear.

Other stories include a kind of mini-Frankenstein story told from the perspective of the youthful monster; a tale of a horror writer who resents sharing the royalties of his most successful story with friends from his youth, who have held him to a contract he signed long before he had ever published anything; a crooked furniture dealer who finds more than he bargained for when he buys a job-lot of storage units; and a black widow out for revenge on the man who raped her in her youth.

And two that I particularly enjoyed are:

I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth – another tale of elderly women looking back, this time at the woman Zenia who stole a man from each of them in their youth, but this one stood out because of its sympathetic portrayal of the friendship between the three women, supporting each other as age takes its toll on them.

Torching the Dusties is the last story in the book. The premise is that young people, maddened by the economic mess left them by their elders, decide those elders should no longer be allowed to live on, eating up scarce resources. It's told from the perspective of Wilma, a woman living in a retirement home, who is almost blind from macular degeneration and has the visual hallucinations that sometimes go with it. Despite its unlikeliness, Atwood manages to make the premise chillingly believable and as the story plays out, she doesn't pull any punches. It's always wise to leave the best to last, and this story went a long way to improving my opinion of the collection overall.

I'm increasingly convinced that collections often detract from, rather than enhancing, the individual stories within them – it's a rare writer who can produce enough originality to maintain a consistent standard and avoid repetition. I'm pretty sure I'd have been impressed by any of these stories had I come across them in an anthology of different authors but, collected as they are here, I found myself sighing a bit as the basic premise was recycled again and again. I admired the book more than I liked it in the end – the tales are skilfully told, but on the whole didn't engage me emotionally, and I fear I haven't been left with a burning desire to seek out more of Atwood's work.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing.

There are nine short stories by Margaret Atwood. I thought I wouldn't like them, but found I enjoyed them. The last Atwood bood I read was "The Handmaid's Tale," which is so bleak.

These stories contain quirky characters, are comical in parts and in a way get back at men for the wrong they have done women. Most of the stories contain ageing characters, two do not. The tales give this reader much to think about.

The first three stories are linked together. Constance, a widow, is a fantasy, science fiction writer, unusual for a woman back during her youth. She is popular for Alphinland, books are published, computer games are made, movies are produced, people dress up in Alpinland characters. Those jealous of Alpinland call her work junk and just made for the masses. Constance's youthful ex-lover is a poet, he has won prizes for his poetry. The poet is now married to his third wife, much younger, of course. A set of boy and girl twins, never married, but now in their seventies, go to the funeral of one of these characters. The group sees characters they have not seen since their youth. And who is the DARK LADY? All the characters in these stories started off very poor, but have done much better.

The next story is about a woman born severely deformed. The one after is about a man who has always used women badly and is about to get his comeuppance. The rest of the book goes back to the elderly. Two good friends get back at a man who has treated a friend badly. Another tale is about a man who made a good living on one particular horror story. Plus the "Stone Mattress" reminds me of a rock in a case at the Hammer Museum in Haines, Alaska. This rock was used to kill an enemy thousands of years ago when only Eskimos lived in Alaska. "Torching the Dusties" is comical. I will say no more. Read the book, laugh, cry and most of all, enjoy.

Sometimes I think Margaret Atwood is a machine. Thus far she has written 14 novels, 7 books of short fiction, 8 children’s books, 10 non-fiction books, and 17 poetry collections. And that’s not even a full count! She has a new collection of short stories out called Stone Mattress: Nine Tales and it is a formidable addition to her oeuvre.

I love Margaret Atwood’s short fiction, and all of these stories are no exception. She crafts fascinating nuanced stories in such a short amount of time. I want to keep reading every single story after it finishes; I want to stay with the characters, to learn more about their lives and habits.

The book starts with three intertwining stories: Alphinland, Revenant, and Dark Lady. The first follows Constance, an aging widow who writes pulpy fantasy novels set in Alphinland – a world entirely of her creation. The story takes place during an intense show storm where she talks to her husband’s ghost and reflects on the event that led her to create her fantasy world: a relationship with a talented but selfish poet who cheated on her. The second story is about that poet, the third about the woman he cheated on her with. These three portraits give you a surprisingly well-rounded view of their world. The characters drift back into each other’s lives and consciousness, with each tale building to a cathartic resolution.

Many of these stories focus on middle age and older people, primarily women. The characters are faced with a variety of issues posed by age: loneliness, self-sufficiency, beauty, their past. Their experiences inform their every move. They reflect on their youthful mishaps while planning, often with significant cunning, their next move.

A couple of the stories have a hint of speculative fiction. The final tale takes place in a retirement home where the nearly-blind protagonist has Charles Bonnet syndrome causing vivid hallucinations of Lilliputian dancing sprites. Simultaneously, the retirement home is besieged by “Our Turn,” a violent international group of young activists bent on eradicating the old. The older generations ruined the world (though they didn’t mean to), and now these activists plan on shoving them off. In another story, Lusus Naturae, a mutation causes a little girl to gradually transform into a sort of wolf-person. She is shunned and scorned by her family; and, while she looks like a monster, she still has all her faculties intact. She hears everything the doctors and her parents are saying about her, even when they don’t think she can hear. Her innocence is heartbreaking, and Atwood perfectly captures her isolation and poignant insight.

The stories are intricate but not pristine. They are glimpses into the worlds of individuals: beautiful, cryptic, and finite.

This collection of nine short stories/tales is classic Margaret Atwood. While not depicted in each story there are common themes across the stories which include aging, death, revenge, infidelity/sex, authors/poets, world-building fantasy (e.g., video games, Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings). Each tale is unique, original, and well written.

These six were my favorites:
"Alphinland" is a story about Constance W. Starr, an elderly woman, who comes to fame writing a world-building fantasy series, Alphinland, which through time becomes wildly successful. Constance's husband, Ewan, is deceased and the story captures her lonliness, talking to and hearing Ewan, and she shares how Alphinland came into existence and how she and those she knew/know are contained within this fictional world.
"Revenant" links to Alphinland through Constance's long ago first love, Gavin Putnam who is a poet and his wife Reynolds. Gavin is elderly and a young woman, Naveena, a graduate student in literature comes to interview him to gain further insight into Constance and her Alphinland series.
"Dark Lady" is linked to the first two stories through two elderly adult twins, Marjorie (Jorrie) and her brother Martin (Tin). Many years earlier, Marjorie had a short relationship with Gavin which leads to the end of Gavin and Constance.
"The Freeze-Dried Groom" is very original. An antique dealer purchases an abandoned storage locker and several surprises are revealed to the reader.
"Stone Mattress" takes place on an Artic tour where an elderly woman, Verna, is reacquainted with a man, Bob, who raped and impregnated When they were teenagers. She confronts Bob.
"Torching the Dusties" is about the residents in an assisted living facility and a global movement of anarchists begin to burn nursing homes because the elderly are becoming a burden on society and using precious resources.
The other three tales were odd world-building fantasy and didn't captivate me.

Margaret Atwood is hardly an unappreciated author. Booker winner, seemingly constant nominee for the Orange and Booker prizes, Harvard Arts Medal, Orion Book Award, and the list goes on. But one thing I’d say she doesn’t get enough credit for is her humorous touch, which can be scathingly, bitingly funny, and which is on frequent display in her newest collection of short stories, Stone Mattress.

The anthology is comprised of nine “tales” (in the afterword, Atwood explains why she prefers that descriptor), the first three of which—“Alphinland”, “Revenant”, and “Dark Lady” are tightly linked by character and events. The others are independent, though they do share some similar themes and characters—vengeance, the travails (and pleasures) of aging, a deliciously macabre tone. Like nearly all such collections, some stories are more successful than others, but, and this is rare for me with regard to story collections, I enjoyed every one. And of course, this being Atwood, even the “lesser” stories are stylistically and technically well-written.

The linked stories center on a trio of aged characters who knew each other in their younger, more bohemian days: Gavin, a somewhat pretentious and wholly unlikable poet; Constance, his girlfriend whose fame and income outstrips Gavin’s after creates a fantasy land called Alphinland; and Marjorie, with whom Gavin cheated on Constance. “Alphinland” introduces Constance not long after she’s lost her long-time husband, whose voice she still hears advising her, in this particular instance about how to survive the terrible winter storm shutting down Toronto for a few days. “Revenant” shifts us to Florida, where the irascible Gavin is being hectored by his most recent wife into an interview with a student interested in his work. Finally, in “Dark Lady,” we’re in Marjorie’s brother’s POV as he witnesses the three old acquaintances brought together one last time.

The changing points-of-view allow us to see events from three different perspectives and like the characters themselves, sometimes we are surprised to learn we were laboring under a misconception or two. All three are richly, distinctively drawn. It’s hard as well not to think Atwood is having some fun here with the idea of genre vs. literary fiction and her own experiences in both worlds and in that debate. Here, for instance, is Constance thinking about her fans:
She also declines to engage in social media, despite her publisher’s constant urging . . . she has no wish to interact with her devoted readers; she knows too much about them already, them and their body piercings and tattoos and dragon fetishes. Above all, she doesn’t want to disappoint them. They’d be expecting a raven-haired sorceress with a snake bracelet on her upper arm . . . instead of a wispy, soft-spoken paperthin exblonde.

Gavin, meanwhile, is hysterically acerbic, as when he thinks of his wife and children after his eventual death:

Reynolds won’t leave him . . . She’s polishing up her widow act . . . She’s so competitive that she’ll hang in there to make sure neither of the two previous wives lay claim to any part of him . . . She’ll also want to cut out his two children . . . He hadn’t paid much attention to them when they were babies—they and their pastel urine-soaked paraphernalia . . . and he’d decamped in each case before they were three—so they don’t like him very much, nor does he blame them, having hated his own father . . . there’ sure to be some squabbling after the funeral; he’s making sure of that by not finalizing his will. If only he could hover around in mid-air to watch.

After seeing Ewan, Constance’s husband, apparently do just that in the first story, one wonders if Gavin will get his wish. In the last story, “Dark Lady,” Marjorie’s brother Tin is the grudging witness to “Jorie’s” attempt to settle old scores, though things don’t go as expected of course.

Vengeance, writers, and genre play major roles in “The Dead Hand Loves You,” about an older writer tired of being bound by the contract he signed decades earlier in his callow youth agreeing to share the profits from his as yet unwritten novel. An aged character seeking revenge for being wronged in her youth is also at the core of the title story, which is set on an Antarctic tour cruise (Atwood explains she and her husband actually came up with this story on a cruise of their own so as to entertain fellow travelers). Both stories were solid, but neither stood out much for me, though Verna, the protagonist in “Stone Mattress” is a great character.

“Lusus Naturae”, about a young girl/vampire, was more successful, conveying a wonderfully poignant sense of the girl’s coming of age, which involves understanding what she is and what that means for her family and her future. It’s a lovely story and I actually wished Atwood had given us more pages of it.

“Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth” was another lesser story in my mind, but as it returned us to the familiar characters of The Robber Bride, I enjoyed it anyway.

Along with the first three, one of my favorites was “Torch the Dusties,” “dusties” being the slang term hurled at the elderly by a terrorist group that calls itself “Our Turn,” whose premise is that the old people have left the young a mess of a world and so need to make room and stop taking up valuable resources. The two main characters, residents of the Ambrosia Manor, an assisted living and full-time care center, are Wilma and Tobias. Wilma is suffering from macular degeneration (“Macular sounds so immoral, the opposite of immaculate”) and Charles Bonnet’s Syndrome (she sees hallucinations of tiny little people). Tobias, meanwhile, is an ultra urbane ladies man whose tales Wilma is never quite trusting of.

It is in this story that we’re presented with one of the constant themes of the collection as a whole:
You believed you could transcend the body as you aged, she tells herself. You believed you could rise above it, to a serene, non-physical realm. But it’s only through ecstasy you can do that, and ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy you can only be dragged further down the body, into its machinery. Its rusting, creaking, vengeful, brute machinery.

For all the scathing satire, the sharply funny bits of dialogue and interior monologue, the fun with genre and literary criticism, the fantasy elements, what I responded most to was generally Atwood’s top-of-her-game facility in creating real, wholly alive characters and specifically, the rich detail with which we entered into the lives of such older characters. The taut suspense of Constance navigating the icy streets of Toronto on a quest for salt, the evocation of moving through a barely seen world as seen through Wilma, Gavin’s acknowledgement that “his regret is that he isn’t a lecherous old man, but he wishes he were. He wishes he still could be,” and the way these characters take action—Constance going on her quest for salt, Verna seeking her vengeance, Tobias and Wilma refusing to just knuckle under to the fear and terror.

At this point in Atwood’s well-known career, there’s little to say about her style or prose beyond that it is exactly at the high level one has grown to expect from her by now. A new work by Atwood is always a treat, and Stone Mattress is no exception. Recommended.

(originally appeared on fantasyliterature.com

This collection contains nine beguiling tales, which Atwood qualifies as being distinct from `stories' in the Acknowledgements section at the end of the book. She says, "We may safely assume that all tales are fiction, whereas a `story' might well be a true story about what we usually agree to call `real life'".

While fantastical, these tales share a sense of realism that makes them all the more spellbinding because they are entirely believable. And of course, Atwood's trademark wit and wicked humour are in full force here, making acerbic jibes at human nature that betray them as social commentaries that show up the "social realism" that Atwood claims is the territory of `stories' only. But that sounds just right and fitting with her reputation as a wilful transgressor of genres, conspiratorial wink and all.

The first three tales are interconnected. In the first, "Alphinland", Constance, whom we discover is a former muse of an aspiring poet, Gavin, in the following tale `Revenant', is a successful pulp fantasy author, and her storyworld Alpinland, contains more than just her characters. `Revenant' tells us more of her backstory with Gavin, while a character Jorrie from their shared past, tells her version in "Dark Lady". The following pieces delve into the realm of folklore ("Lusus Naturae") and psychological thrillers with a twist ("The Freeze-Dried Groom" and "Stone Mattress"), a return of characters from an earlier novel "The Robber Bride" ("I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth"), and an dystopian tale set in an old folks' home ("Torching the Dusties").

Atwood's (by now) signature `fiction-within-fiction' story structures and interest in genre fiction, most distinctly seen in her Booker winner "The Blind Assassin", is featured here not just in "Alphinland", but also in "The Dead Hand Loves You", where a tardy would-be-writer is pressured into finishing his novel by his housemates to pay his part of the rent, and enters into a hasty contract, which comes back to haunt him with surprising results in his later years.

In all these pieces, Atwood addresses the foibles of human nature and their monstrous behaviour head on. However, it is not the obvious monsters that she finds objectionable, but the victimisation that forces them to assume these roles that she pays attention to. As the female protagonist in "Lusus Naturae" says, "when demons are required someone will always be found to supply the part, and whether you step forward or are pushed is all the same in the end."

Delicious in every way.

The nine stories in Margaret Atwood's "Stone Mattress" are exquisitely written, wildly imaginative, sometimes grotesque but always enthralling. Having reached a certain age, Atwood writes with wit and insight about characters who have reached old age with many, many issues from their youths still unresolved. The book gets off to a bravura start with three interlocking stories--"Alphinland," "Revenant," and "Dark Lady"--about a fantasy novelist, a poet and an ad executive who still bear the scars of a love triangle from half a century before. The title story has a woman on a polar cruise, unexpectedly meeting the man who ruined her life many years ago. "The Dead Hand Loves You" is the story of a writer haunted forever by the pact he made with his college roommates. Atwood even reintroduces the protagonists of "The Robber Bride"--Roz, Tony and Charis--in "I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth," which relates what happens when an unwelcome old boyfriend of Charis' suddenly reappears.

My favorite story in the book is the shortest, "Lusus Naturae," a tragic and poetic story about a horribly afflicted young woman. However, every story in this book leaves no doubt that you are in the presence of a master. The very first sentence in the book--"The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant"--draws you in, and Atwood's artistry grips you to the very end.

Margaret Atwood's latest collection of short stories, Stone Mattress: Nine Tales, evoke the classic Atwood aura of strangeness, intrigue and utter shock. This is Atwood's first short story collection since 2006's Moral Disorder. Each tale investigates questions surrounding morality, mortality and humanity among other themes.

Nearly all of the main characters are in the twilight of their lives and are often dealing with situations, memories and people from their pasts. Many of these characters move through multiple stories. In these instances, the reader is able to see characters from different perspectives and with varying degrees of knowledge concerning the situations at hand.

Lightly tracing the inner workings of any given character's mind, the reader can never be sure with whom to identify, sympathize with or root for to overcome their struggles. We meet lovers, ex-lovers, murderers, the raped, defamed and tossed aside as well as those who raped, defamed and did the tossing. Perspective is by far one of the most adamantine themes of Stone Mattress, making its appearance time and again.

Upon finishing a collection of short stories, I have a hard time determining if it deserves five stars. I usually reserve the five star rating for books that I know will stay with me for a long time, books I know I'll think about long after I've finished.

I think this will be one of those collections, but time will tell.

These stories are mostly not science fiction or dystopian, but some have fantastic elements. They're mostly character studies, and most of the characters are elderly and looking back at their lives. I loved the way she did this--each character has such a rich history because there are so many years to draw on; they're complicated and multi-layered. Many of these stories could've spanned entire novels.

The first three stories are tied together, and I had thought the whole book was going to be like that. It's not, so don't be confused when the fourth story has absolutely nothing to do with the first three.

The title story, "Stone Mattress" may be the best she's ever written. These are great tales for people over sixty,, but younger readers will enjoy the characters, too,. They may smile and as they're reminded of a bohemian aunt or grandmother.

In two stories, the protagonists plan to resolve an old grudge centered around a life-changing event. Many decades later, both characters are still angry enough to kill one of more old acquaintances.. Will they follow through with murder? Or. by the time they reconnect,, will their potential victims have changed so drastically that they'll give up their murderous intentions?

Atwood does a superb job with the emotional and mental states of her characters. In the title story, she manages to fill in background information without the reader thinking, "Oh. no. not another flashback!"

So typical Margaret Atwood! If you've read her before, then you'll know what to expect, gentle stories that intertwine with subtle social commentary. Some of them seem a bit long, so I wavered between 4-5 stars, but these are so finely crafted I gave her 5 stars. If you haven't read Margaret Atwood before, she takes seemingly normal people (except for one or two) and writes stories like windows into their lives. These aren't action or thriller stories for the most part, though she can get up some tension, but like I said, more like windows into their lives. A peaceful book and nice to have stories instead of a long novel... but each seem to have a life of their own, though some are interconnected. Enjoyable.

_Stone Mattress_ is another in a long line of beautifully written books by the award winning author, Margaret Atwood.
This book is a collection of nine short stories. The first three are connected by story line and characters, but each stands alone as a solid story without it companies. All of the stories are of honest, three dimensional characters, some of which may be very similar to people you might know in your own life. I love the way Atwood can write from both the perspective of a woman and a man - and it is believable and real. Her stories of relationships with all the ups and downs are intricate but real. Love, loss, revenge, forgiveness - all written beautifully.

I'm usually a big fan of Margaret Atwood, but this book was not close to her best work. For one, I didn't think the writing was her usual style, less descriptive and evocative than her novels. My second dislike was the characters. This is probably more personal taste, but there were some stories I just couldn't finish because I really hated all of the characters in it, like the Sam and Gwyneth one. If you don't mind reading about completely unlikeable people, that might be less of an issue.
I did like some of the short stories. The first three centered around some common characters, and while the writing wasn't as pretty as I was expecting, they felt more like her novels with complex characters who make some good, some bad decisions and have to learn to deal with them and their fallout.

I think this is a really good collection and I think this would be an interesting text to use in a course where the focus is magical realism. I say this because Atwood, in this collection, makes clear that these are not "stories," but "tales." Thus they are folksy and are, each in their own way, removed from the real. Yet, this is tempered magical realism and I think this is something Atwood has always excelled at, meaning: Atwood excels in writing the familiar unfamiliar (uncanny). It is familiar enough that we recognize it, but unfamiliar enough that we question certain constructs within it. The tales are very good, very clever, and absolutely lovely.

I was a reader of Atwood's earlier books and Cat's Eye is still one of my all-time favorites, but I fell away from her books as she was drawn toward dystopian and science fiction themes. She is a wonderful wordsmith and so I couldn't resist this collection; my favorite story is also the title of the book. I am not a fan of dystopian literature and can't say I enjoyed the final tale, but just the same, it made me think and I'm sure that was her point. I couldn't help compare these with Roald Dahl's quirky short stories, and while I doubt I'll return to her long-form fiction, I will certainly be watching for her next story collection.

Wow, Stone Mattress: Nine Tales is an exhilarating read! And Margaret Atwood's latest collection of stories is particularly interesting because of its focus on an older demographic. Now that she's in her 70s, Atwood writes a lot about elderly characters - seven of these nine stories focus on people who are in their sixties or above. And these characters live within some wonderful, fantastic tales.

Particularly of note is the final story, Torching the Dusties, about a nearly-blind woman in a retirement home that is under threat of arson by young people who resent the elderly. There's a lot going on in these stories, and they're a joy to read.

My favorite story, the eponymous Stone Mattress, is about an older woman who has the opportunity to confront her rapist from high school. Even if the rest of this collection was subpar, I would still be raving about that story. But these stories are all good, and rich with reflections on the past and commentaries on aging in a world filled with young people. Even as a person in their 20s, I found every tale fascinating in its own way. Highly recommended for people of all ages.

Also, extra love for the first three stories, which are intertwined. It's always nice to see related characters examined from wildly different perspectives.

A really unique collection of stories. I love Margaret Atwood, ever since "the Handmaid Tale" I've been hooked, this is such a delightful collection of short stories. The first three are woven together, but enjoyable as individual pieces as well. The rest of the stories vary in tone and subject, so each one is a different treat. I'd liken it to a box of chocolate but Mr Gump has that copyrighted so....It's a really good read. I'd say read a different story each night and enjoy it with a cup of tea

Ms. Atwood is one of the most creative minds in fiction writing today. This is a collection of wildly different short stories that will make readers take notice and then go out and read some of her novels. That is my only regret here. I wished that many of these stories were expanded because I loved the characters and stories so much. Two of note include a woman who is slighted by a boy named Bob in her youth and she takes revenge on "Bobs" the rest of her life. Another is about the dismembered hand of a man which haunts a woman he was in love with because it still loves her. Unique!

Are you old enough to read this book? Not because this is an x-rated, salacious group of stories. Quite the opposite.

Possible spoilers ahead *********
Although there are exceptions, a common thread runs through many of the entries. Older characters come full circle by confronting people who made them unhappy when they were younger. Sometimes the protagonists learn that they were mistaken and have held unfounded grudges all their adult lives. At least one finds that she is fully justified in her decades-long pain, resulting in her murdering the person at fault.

The characters tend to be a bit batty, but charming, although I think my favorite story may the "The Freeze Dried Groom," a sort of mystery story with a lack of sympathetic characters.

Atwood's apt and often smile-inducing metaphors and similes brighten the pages. She says, "Sex in the morning, kissing his way up her like a slug on a lettuce."

But some puzzled me. Two friends give Charis, a third friend, an unruly dog, only to find that "Charis couldn't train a banana." Can anyone train a banana? Maybe it is a Canadian thing.

Margaret is a consummate writer. No one writes quite like her. The is an amalgamation of stories that sometimes appear related, but other times not so much. From the first couple of stories that are related, I expected a Jumpa Lahiri-type book with interrelated characters, but not so. Having said that I still enjoy reading her presentation and characterizations, and prefer good writing to plot lines any day.

A fine collection of stories in part about aging creatives and their bumpy interactions, past and present. Atwood's concerns, her wry eye for herself and her peers and her understanding of the issues we face as a species, the profligacy of the old, the outrage of the young, are all here. If you love her work, as I do, you will love this book. It would also be a good introduction, I think, to her themes and to her wit and sense of irony and humor. The final story, "Torch the Dusties," is worth the price of the book. A rather dark look at who we choose to scapegoat and sacrifice in society.

After reading The Handmaids Tale (and watching the TV show), I had to find other books/stories by Atwood. This is a collection of nine short stories. A few of them ("Burning the Dusties," "The Freeze Dried Groom," "Stone Mattress," and "The Dead Hand Loves You") certainly stood out from the rest as ones I liked.

It's been a long time since I've read Margaret Atwood. I read and loved The Handmaid's Tale years ago, so I figured it was about time to read something else of hers. After reading the tales in Stone Mattress, I'm finding it difficult to write a review. I didn't dislike any of the stories, but I also wasn't really moved by any of the stories either. I did enjoy the writing style, and how some of the tales were loosely linked. I would definitely recommend this to Margaret Atwood fans as well as fans of short fiction. As others are giving this book rave reviews, perhaps it simply wasn't my cup of tea.

I haven't read Atwood in quite a while, and I was a little disappointed. While her writing is as flawless as ever, I found myself not caring at all about the characters. Extremely cerebral, the vast majority of text is mental wondering which, to me, never quite went anywhere. I really wanted to like this, and I have made it to page 53. I'm not sure if I'll make it to the end, which rarely happens. Remember, this is just my opinion. I love a lot of her work. Right now maybe I'm just needing something else in literature. I hope to come back to this book when I'm mellower.

I laughed so long and so loudly at these wonderful stories about the indignities of old age that've when I read the final word i just wanted to begin all over again. Thank you Margaret Atwood for this very true betrayal of old age in this time of too busy offspring, cult of eternal youth, and 24 hour news bulletins. Where do old people fit in ? Oh dear I too belong to the generation whose face (after a makeup application ) looks like a brown leather purse with a sprinkling of gold stars . I too feel that calls from family to inquire about my net worth are tedious.
I too feel I am slipping into irrelevance. Thank you Margaret Atwood for another wonderful book. It made me feel much less lonely and much more relevant if only for the time it took to read it.

Rich and lush are words I'd use to describe this latest collection of Atwood's short stories. Though I've read a number of her novels, all of which were intelligent and multi-layered, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from her stories. As it turns out, a playful side of Atwood emerges, accompanying a delightfully snarky undertone. I found it a simply delightful foray into the world of her shorter fiction. If you already love her, as I do, you'll be happy with this book. If you're new to Atwood, you'll be smitten.

These are nine tales of aging and remembrance. The characters have led rich and colorful lives and look back with relief or longing at their lost youth. Their emotions and experiences in the aging process lead them to surprising actions and outcomes. Atwood does a great job describing old age and how we look at it. Of course she throws in some of her magical spice to make tasty stories. As we age, we might literally become invisible.

Multiply disturbing stories for anyone who is a) a lifelong self-doubting writer, b) getting older, c) questioning their relationships and motives. Death steps from the shadows, and all perspectives change.

I don't usually write reviews, but I was horrified to read so many negative reviews about this book on the site. The book is fabulous. There are few who can write good short stories; Atwood is amongst those few. My advice? Ignore the negative reviews and make up your own mind. If you like Angela Carter or Jane Gardam or even Barbara Pym, you will be very pleased with this book indeed. (And if you like this book, and you haven't yet encountered Carter or Gardam or Pym - seek them out.)

I can only assume that the negative reviews are written by people who are completely unfamiliar with this author or the genre. Perhaps someone somewhere suggested that it might be suitable for book groups more used to other kinds of material ...?

I make no bones that I am a die-hard Atwood fan. She is one of those rare authors who can write long novels and master the art of short storytelling. "Stone Mattress" is great. I loved all of these but esp. loved "I Dream of Zenia with The Bright Red Teeth" which featured the characters from the novel "The Robber Bride"-Tony, Roz, and Charis-in the present day. It was like revisiting old friends! My only beef is that I wish the story had been longer.

I absolutely loved these short stories. Some are sad, some are sly, some highly alarming; all are impeccably written. The first three cover the same event from three different viewpoints, which was fascinating. Ms Atwood writes especially movingly about old people. It was a book I really didn't want to finish.

Nine great stories. Some I liked more than others but they were all excellent and I found something to enjoy in every one of them. Kudos to the author.
My favourites were the last one (Torch the Dusties?) and The Dead Hand Loves You.
If you enjoy reading short stories and "get" Atwood, grab this book!

Having not read fiction by Margaret Atwood in nearly twenty years, I was surprised to discover how original - indeed quirky and occasionally a bit twisted (due in part to her revenge themes) - her writing had become. As a whole, some of these stories were a bit too oddball, tongue-in-cheek or just plain nasty for my taste, but others struck me as deeply engaging and superbly crafted.

Of these nine tales, I give 5 stars to Dark Lady, The FreezeDried Groom, The Stone Mattress, and Torching the Dusties. Three others I rate between 3-4 stars, but have to stretch to give a lowly 2-star rating to I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth, and The Dead Hand Loves You. Many of the stories have elderly heroines. The first three in the book have some overlapping characters, which helps contribute to the emotionally moving climax in the third, The Dark Lady.

Some of the plots are fascinating. My comments which follow do not give away any key surprises or twists in the stories but give you a general idea of the plot as revealed in the first few pages of each story: In the three interwoven stories, author Constance, seeks revenge against those who have hurt her through disguising them as characters she punishes in her public fantasy world, Alphinland. In another story, an antique dealer who purchases some unopened abandoned storage lockers makes a shocking discovery.

The Stone Mattress, the title story previously published in The New Yorker, begins with the enticing lines, "At the outset Verna had not intended to kill anyone. What had in mind was a vacation." Superbly written, it concerns a woman vacationing with a group of strangers in the Arctic, who realizes that one of her companions is the man who raped her when both were teenagers, an act which basically ruined her life. Although her response to his presence is cold and calculating, I found myself empathizing with her and wanting to see the male perpetrator punished fifty years after his crime. A reader's reaction to Constance is likely to raise a number of intriguing moral issues.

As an ageing Baby Boomer myself, concerned about the financial difficulties of elders and problems likely to result from our ageing population, I was particularly affected by the last story, Touching the Dusties. A chilling tale set in a nursing home in the not-very-distant future, it portrays a time of massive citizen unrest - protests against the cost of eldercare. "Time to Go," "It's Our Turn," and "Torch the Dusties" are rallying cries of protestors who view the dependent elderly as "parasitic deadwood" and begin blockading nursing homes and then burning them down. Although presenting a dystopian vision, this story speaks to real socio-political concerns that are indeed likely to become a source of heated controversy in the future.

This is an uneven collection of stories, but nearly half of them are excellent. As a whole, I rate The Stone Mattress four stars.

Margaret Atwood is a wonder and adept at both long and short fiction. This is a collection of nine linked short stories. Some are linked with overlapping characters, but all are linked by the theme of aging. If you enjoy literary fiction, then don't miss this collection.

My first foray into the would of short stories. I tend to stay away from short stories because I always thought they would be too - well - short. This was also my first exposure to Margaret Atwood.

I liked some of the stories, didn’t care for others and wanted more from a few. I’m thinking I was lucky to have my first selection of shorts to be by Ms. Atwood. Her writing is wonderfully original and a bit offbeat.

I’d like to thank Doubleday, via Netgalley, for allowing me to read this in exchange for an unbiased review.

After my disappointment with the MaddAddam Trilogy, this book was like a gift. Work like this is why I fell in love with Atwood's writing in the first place.

Pairs well with: Moose Drool Brown Ale

Having greatly enjoyed Atwood's books before and knowing of the esteem in which she is regarding by readers I respect, I am reluctant to rate this book poorly, but I just couldn't connect with it.

I loved the MaddAddam trilogy, and I remember appreciating Handmaid's Tale when I read it years ago, but for reason I had trouble connecting with her writing in the more mundane settings of most of these stories. Somehow the dark edge that makes her speculative fiction so powerful just felt overly cynical to me in these stories.

I love Margaret Atwood's ability to have real life characters, you might even know someone like that. But then, something happens, or they do something out of the ordinary, and a menacing surrealism sneaks in. The characters are connected in the first several stories, too.

This was such a delighful read. It has been a while since I last read Margaret Atwood, but almost every page reminded me why she deserves all the aclaim. All the stories are beautifully crafted, some sentences and ideas just brilliant.

This was not the book for me. I did not like the way the author interrelated some, but not all of the nine stories. It was a bit confusing. Not one of the tales were intriguing enough for me to want to read more.

Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite writers and this collection of short stories shows her incredible talent with sometimes creepy, sometimes laugh out loud funny tales and characters. All of these stories will stay with me for a long time.

This apocalypse is one we all will face,given we live long enough.

This is Atwood at her best.......running theme.....the Geriatric Apocalypse. .....The last story is actually the best. The characters, trying to find meaning in the life they are soon to leave are richly drawn......I wanted there to be another story....then more. It ends too quickly.

I enjoyed reading The Handmaids Tale (except for the let down ending) so I bought this book also written by Margaret Atwood.
Big mistake. The stories are silly, have an " old hippie leftover" style of culture and the endings are terrible, they are flat and simple one liners and a schoolchild could have written better ones. The only thing I did get from this book was that reading for 10 minutes before bed put me to sleep.

This apocalypse is one we all will face,given we live long enough.

This is Atwood at her best.......running theme.....the Geriatric Apocalypse. .....The last story is actually the best. The characters, trying to find meaning in the life they are soon to leave are richly drawn......I wanted there to be another story....then more. It ends too quickly.

I enjoyed reading The Handmaids Tale (except for the let down ending) so I bought this book also written by Margaret Atwood.
Big mistake. The stories are silly, have an " old hippie leftover" style of culture and the endings are terrible, they are flat and simple one liners and a schoolchild could have written better ones. The only thing I did get from this book was that reading for 10 minutes before bed put me to sleep.

You can't go wrong with Margaret Atwood. This is, as you would expect, a fantastic short story collection. The first three function as a trilogy, while the remaining are stand-alone tales. If you are a fan of her work, or just enjoy great writing, you won't be disappointed.

These nine stories were vengeful and presented every character as unlikable. Whether about a child or a senior, they were unpleasant to read. Margaret Atwood should have put her considerable writing talent to better use.