Good Bones and Simple Murders

Every story in this book is good. I have to say that up front because now I'm going to tell you that the third story, "Unpopular Gals," is why this book will remain forever enshrined on my bookshelf. In five and a half pages, Atwood tells you why fairy tales live forever, and it ain't because of that wimpy, weak-kneed, put-upon little girl whose rescue always takes center stage.

Quite honestly, before I read this book, I had hesitated to indulge in "flash fiction." I like my fiction long, the longer the better. I like Gore Vidal because his works are looooong. This lovely little book of flash fiction sold me on the art form. While many of the stories are not narrative fiction in the traditional sense, they are smart and funny. Many of them are based on ideas more than the heart of the character. In a longer work, that would make the work slight and overly intellectual. Here, it makes them snappy. In addition, many of these works are excellent jumping off points to consider literature and writing. For example, the second piece, "Unpopular Gals," tells the story of fairy tales from the POV of the evil stepsister or stepmother. While the POV character laments that she gets all the blame, the piece ends with, "You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can't get me out of the story. I'm the plot, babe, and don't ever forget it." [Emphasis added.] You can discuss the post-modern era with its emphasis on the disenfranchised character all you like, but that one gem is worth the whole book to an aspiring writer. The other pieces are just as good. TK Kenyon Author of Rabid: A Novel and Callous: A Novel

"Good Bones" is one of my favourites from way back in junior high school. A decade or so later, Atwood's essays and creative tid bits still have resonance for me. Her wit and subversive humour really shine here in this collection.

A truly delightful book, so humurous yet revealing deep contemplation of the challenge of being human and female.

There is quite a mixture of ``genres'' and moods in the book. Some of them, I do not know how to name these writings, are pure satires and witty criticisms of the crook in every human being and in humanity in general, and others are like a breeze getting free from one's stream of consciousness. I felt this latter type really close to me and discovered why: because they are poems without the traditional poetic form. They can transmit a mood into the reader. Yes, they have no story or obvious message to the mind but rather to the whole human being; not food for the analysing mind but a kind of programs that get all your internal resources arranged into a special pattern which is more visual, that is, you rather wonder at it than think about it because you feel it moving and coming to life in you, than verbal.