Margaret Atwood is a very good writer, but these stories are pretty uncaptivating for a high school audience. Over the past few years, I have been collecting all of her books for the school library, but I think I'll just withdraw this one. I read most of the stories, but didn't finish the book as I got really bored. ( )

Some of the themes in these stories make an appearance in Cat's Eye. The endings to several stories seem to come along suddenly, almost shut down. This makes me wonder if Cat's Eye was the one that Atwood just didn't want to finish too soon, or if some/all of the selections is Bluebeard's Egg was a warm up. All in all, well worth the time spent as I am still thinking over characters revealed in the beginning, middle and end of the book. ( )

I'm still wading into the Atwood oeuvre, having only read Wilderness Tips and The Handmaid's Tale before this volume. This book, while full of well-crafted stories, didn't impress me as much as the stories in Wilderness Tips did. All the craft is there, but something was turned to 10 or 11 in her other stories which was only at 8 or 9 here. The stories are less daring, the frames (many of the stories in Wilderness Tips are framed by the protagonist recounting or remembering the events) when they occur less illuminating.

This book is still good and intelligently written, but the comparison to her other work is irresistible, and where I shivered perhaps once from the beauty and horror in these pages, her other work made me lose count of the shivers. ( )

A lot like a box of someone else's treasures that you wish were yours... ( )