Moral Disorder and Other Stories

Not the most compelling Atwood—maybe because these interrelated short stories seemed to offer the worst of both worlds: an expectation for the plot development of a novel that short stories can't deliver on, but some "carry-over" from one story to the next that seemed to detract from the impact of each story on its own. Nevertheless, even mediocre Atwood is better than most other authors at their best.

I don't think I would have appreciated this collection as much if I'd read it when I was younger. Life has had a fair amount of time to knock me around so the struggles (and hopes!) portrayed as the narrator aged throughout the short stories resonated. Adore her prose:

But I wasn't without social resources. I didn't take off my clothes and sing in public: I acted in acceptable ways. I smiled, nodded, made conversation, and so forth. I could do a good imitation of a competent young woman.

Maybe she would grow cunning, up here on the farm. Maybe she would absorb some of the darkness, which might not be darkness at all but only knowledge. She would turn into a woman others came to for advice. She would be called in emergencies. She would show more roll up her sleeves and dispense with sentimentality, and do whatever blood-soaked, bad-smelling thing had to be done. She would become adept with axes. show less

I read this book with a tight swelling of love in my chest. It's about generations of women and the way that they see the world around them. I found myself missing my own mother and reflecting on all the things that we leave unsaid to the ones we love.

I felt as if I were groping through brambles in a night so dark I couldn't see my own hands. At my wit's end had been, before this, merely an expression, but now it described a concrete reality: I could see my wits unrolling, like a ball of string, length after length of wits being played out, each length failing to hold fast, breaking off as if rotten, until finally the end of the string would be reached, and what then? How many days were left for me to fill -- for me to fill responsibly -- before the real parents would come back and take over, and I could escape to my life?

This is the story of a woman's life told in short story form. While the stories can stand alone, they work beautifully together to create a portrait of a life. Nell show more comes of age just before the sixties and seventies upended the social order, turning her from an independent spirit into someone just not adventurous enough. Her life is an ordinary one, but beautifully told. My favorite story is His Last Duchess, in which Nell thinks about the women she reads about in her literature class. While I love Atwood's more adventurous novels, like Oryx and Crake and The Blind Assassin, I think this quieter story allows her writing and nuanced characterizations to really shine. show less

As always, you can rely on Margaret Atwood. She's a quick sketch artist with a special feeling for the undercurrents of girlhood, families, changing social attitudes. Some of these loosely interlinked stories remind me of Alice Munro; the girl and woman, sometimes called Nell, that runs through these stories comes age in the 1960's. So she's old enough to have chafed at the old rules but young enough to take full advantage of the new ones.

Otherwise, the territory reminds me a lot of some of Atwood's earlier works that borrow generously from her own life: The parents (well, the father )involved in some kind of outdoorsy, lab related academic work, lonely spells in the wilderness, the shift to Toronto. It's been a long time since I read show more them, but I think that material is familiar from Cat's Eye (a great novel) and Bluebeard's Egg (short stories). Nothing wrong with that, but you might be disappointed if you were expecting more of the experiments she did in Oryx and Crake. show less

I guess I have to confess that I'm not a big fan of short stories (except if they are science fiction in which case I usually enjoy them). These short stories were more of a continuing dialogue than individual short stories so it was more like reading a novel than a book of short stories. As I read I suspected that most of these stories are autobiographical, a suspicion that is born out by a rather lengthy article from The Guardian. So, in a way, that made them more interesting to me. (She did have a much younger sister so are the tales about her true? And if so, how does her sister feel about that?)

I think my favourite story is probably the title story which details how the couple (Nell and Tig) populate their "farm" with animals of show more all kinds and the difficult choices you have to make about those animals. It reminded me a lot of the farm I grew up on. Every year we would have newborn lambs being bottle raised in the kitchen. And I can still recall being butted into the fence by the ram. Atwood captures all the nuances of life on a farm. show less

This book has been sitting on my TBR file for awhile, and I decided it was time to read it. It's not my first Margaret Atwood book, but the first I've read that portrays her minimalist writing skills. The book is a series of "snapshots in time", or vignettes that trace a life. The book opens with the heroine, Nell and her husband Tig later on in their lives. Then it switches to Nell at eleven years old. Then proceeds with eight more vignettes of her life progressing from that age to about 45 years old.By that time Nell and Tig have lived a full life with all its stumbles, missteps and, in fact some positive happenings, but truthfully the vignettes depict the tough times much more than the happy ones. The book is not a happy and joyful show more read, but it says so much in so few well-chosen and well-crafted words and sentences. The last two vignettes are two separate depictions of end-of-life experiences. These stories are so well-illustrated that I had to stop for awhile between them to reflect and get back my equilibrium. At my age, death and dying are a fact of life, but I must admit that I don't dwell on those or on the inevitable consequences. Atwood made me examine these topics, make an assessment and then assimilate what she says so that it makes sense to me. She is a very talented writer, and her books are a journey more than just enjoyable fiction. Glad I took the time. I have one more of her books that has been sitting for ever on my shelf - The Robber Bride, and I want to dip into that pretty quickly. show less