A collection of short pieces which are dry, ironic, strange. Various topics, including Queen Gertrude in Hamlet addressing her son, or the viewpoint of the little red hen, which seems to be from a children's story I'm not familiar with, but all have a common thread of examining misogyny and the roles played by women and men. Well-written and clever, sad, dark in places. ( )

In University, I had the opportunity to pick up some of Margaret Atwood's books - mostly the inter-texts of fairy tales! I fell in love with her writing, and soon after I was binging The Handmaid's Tale and it's sequel. I accidentally stumbled upon this book as a charity book sale and I jumped at the chance to read it. Why wouldn't I? Margaret Atwood is a LEGEND. And after a little bit of research, I found there were more inter-texts hiding in this book too.

This series of short stories is a great read if you want some compelling and intriguing stories by a writer who is the master of the art. The different point of views of fairy tales really got me, and I had to reread some of the stories (alongside reading some other amazing reviews and takes on the book) to get a good grasp on what was going on. I seriously loved deep diving in this book.

I highly recommend it and I definitely am going to be picking up more books by this legend. Her writing is wickedly smart and she sees stories in such a mind boggling way.

Three out of five stars. ( )

If you're looking for 'normal' short stories, this collection isn't it. Some are like dreams, others a stream of thought. All are deeper than their brevity suggests, thought provoking and surprising. A masterpiece in showing the larger story through inference. ( )

A selection of short stories, most of them very short. Some of them are in conjoined sets, so you'll have several on a common theme that are read in order. But don't let length put you off, some of the are delightful. The sets wjhere she takes delight in skewering fairy tales, or telling classic stories from a different perspective are worth the rest of the book alone. The one taking the voice of Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, is just fantastically twisted in conception.
Some of them just didn;t do it for me, but the gems are there and deserve to be picked out. ( )

Bizarre yet truthful--very odd way of writing poetry. I like her literary stance much better. ( )