A brilliant collection of connected short stories following the life of a single woman, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Handmaid s Tale. In these eleven tales, Margaret Atwood brings to life the story of one remarkable character, following her from girlhood in the 1930s, through her coming-of-age in the 50s and 60s, and into the present day where, no longer young, she reflects on the new state of the world. Each story focuses on the ways relationships transform a life: a woman s complex love for a married man, the grief upon the death of parents and the joy with the birth of children, and the realization of what growing old with someone you love really means. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorderdisplays Atwood s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage."
A brilliant collection of connected short stories following the life of a single woman, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Handmaid s Tale. In these eleven tales, Margaret Atwood brings to life the story of one remarkable character, following her from girlhood in the 1930s, through her coming-of-age in the 50s and 60s, and into the present day where, no longer young, she reflects on the new state of the world. Each story focuses on the ways relationships transform a life: a woman s complex love for a married man, the grief upon the death of parents and the joy with the birth of children, and the realization of what growing old with someone you love really means. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorderdisplays Atwood s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage."
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of
fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye,
The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the
MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was
followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global
number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she
published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade.
Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award
for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime
Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she
was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for
services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist,
illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in
Toronto, Canada.
“Sharply focused, intensely personal. . . . Moral Disorder is
domestic realism at its most convincing. . . . These are poignant
stories crammed with richly nostalgic detail, rueful, wise,
elegiac.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
“Elegant. . . . In Moral Disorder, Atwood travels deep into the
expanse of memories and language built up over her writing lifetime
and offers a handful of gems to illuminate our times.” —The Los
Angeles Times Book Review
“Poignant. . . . Wry. . . . The tremendous imaginative power of
[Atwood's] fiction allows us to believe that anything is possible.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Searingly intelligent. . . . [These are] beguiling narratives that
Atwood unspools with signature grace and incisiveness.” —Elle
An intriguing patchwork of poignant episodes, Atwood's latest set of stories (after The Tent) chronicles 60 years of a Canadian family, from postwar Toronto to a farm in the present. The opening piece of this novel-in-stories is set in the present and introduces Tig and Nell, married, elderly and facing an uncertain future in a world that has become foreign and hostile. From there, the book casts back to an 11-year-old Nell excitedly knitting garments for her as yet unborn sister, Lizzie, and continues to trace her adolescence and young adulthood; Nell rebels against the stern conventions of her mother's Toronto household, only to rush back home at 28 to help her family deal with Lizzie's schizophrenia. After carving out a "medium-sized niche" as a freelance book editor, Nell meets Oona, a writer, who is bored with her marriage to Tig. Oona has been searching for someone to fill "the position of second wife," and she introduces Nell to Tig. Later in life, Nell takes care of her once vital but now ravaged-by-age parents. Though the episodic approach has its disjointed moments, Atwood provides a memorable mosaic of domestic pain and the surface tension of a troubled family. (Sept. 19) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
"Sharply focused, intensely personal. . . . Moral
Disorder is domestic realism at its most convincing. . . .
These are poignant stories crammed with richly nostalgic detail,
rueful, wise, elegiac." -Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review
of Books
"Elegant. . . . In Moral Disorder, Atwood travels
deep into the expanse of memories and language built up over her
writing lifetime and offers a handful of gems to illuminate our
times." -The Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Poignant. . . . Wry. . . . The tremendous imaginative
power of [Atwood's] fiction allows us to believe that anything is
possible." -New York Times Book Review
"Searingly intelligent. . . . [These are] beguiling
narratives that Atwood unspools with signature grace and
incisiveness." -Elle
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