Reviews

Old Babes in the Wood: Stories by Margaret Atwood

Only show reviews with written explanations

chester_is's review against another edition

4.0

it's a sandwich, this book. the bread is autofictional stories of Nell & Tig, aka Atwood and Graeme Gibson. these are equal parts funny and heartbreaking, as Tig/Graeme departed this life in 2019, and the freshness and sweetness of Atwood's grief are abundant.

the "meat" of the sandwich — or maybe roasted eggplant, or tuna salad — is a selection of mostly recent stories, anchored by "My Evil Mother", bittersweet. many of the other stories are speculative/sci-fi, but in earthbound ways, even when the narrator is extra-terrestrial. the weirdness quotient is high, and i applaud this unreservedly.

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian treasure, yes. but more than that, she is a human treasure. it is my fortune to have come to her at a point in my life when i can fully appreciate the reading.

i'll return later to add my note on the type. i found one spelling error in the book, but it was an easy one to make: the Netherlandish river the IJssel is mistakenly referred to as the Ijssel. in Netherlandish, the ij is a single letter; it's basically a y, and often functions as such in a way that English speakers would recognise:a baker works in his bakery; a bakker works in his bakkerij. when the initial capital of a place name, the IJ is capitalised, as those two letters are joined at the hip and act as one. IJssel.

sloejoe's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

An ok and sentimental collection of stories about mortality and memory, framed by a beginning about a woman's life with her husband and an ending about life without him. Atwood is not subtle in the allusion to her own husband's death and that's fair enough.