The Bad News
An older couple go about their morning rituals.

The Art of Cooking and Serving
An eleven-year-old becomes responsible for the care of her expecting mother, then much of the baby's care when it's born.

The Headless Horseman
While driving to visit their ailing mother, two adult sisters reminisce about a Halloween costume the older sister made during their childhood.

My Last Duchess
A high school couple analyze the poem, The Last Duchess, in preparation for a final exam.

The Other Place
A female adult travels from job to job and place to place. Eventually she settles down and marries Tig.

Monopoly
Tig and Oona decide to live in an open-marriage.

Moral Disorder
Tig and Nell move to another farm. They are excited to grow vegetables and raise animals.

White Horse
Nell's friend gives her and Tig a horse. Lizzie (Nell's sister) comes for a visit when she's not feeling very encouraged about life.

The Entities
When they decide to sell the farm and move back to the city, Nell and Tig befriend their real-estate Agent, Lillie.

The Labrador Fiasco
Nell goes to her parents' home for a visit.

The Boys at the Lab
An adult woman is taking care of her 90-year-old, bedridden mother. They reminisce while looking at old pictures.

Being that all these short stories were related, I don't understand why they weren't considered a novel. Adding some dates onto the titles would have made it an easier read, because on occasion I had difficulty figuring out exactly what characters were being portrayed. A new scenario was developed for each story and some of them were interesting, but others I wondered why it was chosen as an important piece to the puzzle. Throughout the book, I did experience a range of enjoyment; however, I didn't find anything spectacular. I did discover that I prefer short stories to be just that - short stories, not chapters in disguise. (3/5)

Originally posted on: "Thoughts of Joy..." ( )

A cycle of stories that move between Toronto and Georgian Bay, youth, adolescence, middle age, old age.

I love Margaret Atwood. I can really only read short stories that she's authored. ( )

Imagine you are meandering through a well-organised, neatly kept and very pretty garden. You start out admiring borders of pink and white azaleas, but then with a curve in the path suddenly find yourself surrounded by bright yellow daffodils when you thought you were heading towards the lavenders and lilacs. Reading Atwood’s latest collection of short stories is a bit like this. Her prose has the lightness and delicacy of these flowers but the stories twist and turn in unexpected ways and as with the best gardens, you are left feeling there are shaded spaces and delightful aspects not fully appreciated in a single encounter.
The language may be light and delicate but Atwood addresses substantial, fundamental and timeless truths, and does it with her usual exquisite irony and gentle humour. The Bad News of the first story is imagined “as a huge bird, with the wings of a crow and the face of my Grade Four schoolteacher” which drops rotten eggs. Death, anyone’s death, but especially her partner’s, is the bad egg the aging Nell doesn’t want to hear, “not yet”.
The compilation begins and ends with stories about aging and disintegration and the inevitability, if not acceptance, of death. The intervening linked stories dissect the pleasures and agonies of a girl maturing, and show how she negotiates her important relationships. We see her engage—or struggle to engage—with her sister, parents, lovers, partner, partner’s ex-wife and partner’s children, though not with her own children: an odd gap in an otherwise rich portrait of a woman’s life.
This collection also explores the relationship of reading to living, of the role of stories in influencing our understanding, our dreaming and our remembering. A cookbook, The Art of Cooking and Serving, presents the younger Nell with a more attractive, ordered, and certain world than that which she inhabits, but she eventually, suddenly, senses a future where she “no longer has to do service”. My Last Duchess weaves Nell’s analysis of the eponymous poem with her developing understanding of boy/girl relationships. In this tale it is the girl who survives.
Later stories focus less on written narratives as a source of illumination and more on other characters’ personal legends, those tellings and re-tellings and rememberings and misremembering by which we come to know each other and construct ourselves.
As Nell notes in The Other Place, “We can’t really travel to the past, no matter how we try. If we do it’s as tourists.” Atwood offers up these little tours, these little explorations of both the significant and the not-so-obviously-important moments in her character’s life. Is it Atwood’s life? It might be, or some parts of her life. That doesn’t matter. It has a sense of truth to it, whether it is true or not. Any of us who have had similar experiences will recognise the emotional and existential reality of these stories even if our details are different. ( )

probably not the absolute best Atwood piece ever, but wonderful nonetheless. I loved reading the descriptions of the farms that Nell and Tig lived on - once again, a home in the woods away from everyone? Sign me up! It was a moving collection though, lots of life and death topics popping up here and there. If you like Atwood, this is definitely one to check out. ( )