Moral Disorder and Other Stories

I can't wait to read my books! Atwood is a marvel of beautiful cynicism.

I find Margaret Atwood to be an extremely versatile writer, and some of her later works--this one included--are almost poetry although they are prose...There are passages I have to read again and again, they are so powerfully written. Just 2.5 pages into the book, she is describing the relationship between a couple: "Communication hasn't failed us, not yet. 'Not yet' is aspirated, like the 'h' in 'honour'. It's the silent 'not yet'. We don't say it out loud." Right then I knew she had me; I was hooked. This morning I read a passage where a woman is describing how she feels intimidated by her lover's former marriage: "It [the marriage] had a certain oversized and phosphorescent splendour about it, like a whale decaying on a beach." This particular book is a collection of short stories from different periods of the life of a single character. I'm still savoring the book, and I am deeply thankful that Atwood is such a prolific writer. I don't know why she hasn't been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature-perhaps just "not yet"... P.S. If you like the certain intense way she uses words in this book, you might also enjoy "The Tent". The stories are much shorter and thus less engaging in a sense, but like "Moral Disorder", "The Tent" is another example of literature at the limits of mastery.

"Atwood is a brilliant writer. Fans of The Handmaid's Tale - one of the best books ever written - will not be disappointed with new collection of Atwood's short stories."

"Moral Disorder" by Margaret Atwood is a collection of eleven short stories. Each stands easily and delightfully alone; in fact, five of them have previously appeared in magazines. But taken as a whole, this collection gathers synergy and eventually morphs into a most uncommon and extraordinary novel--a first-rate character study. All the stories deal with the life of one woman, Nell, an archetypal Canadian "everywoman." What makes this woman special is the choices she makes. These are everyday choices made by a woman with a strong moral compass. With each choice, life takes a new path, thus the moral disorder of the title. This book is about the mysterious unpredictability of life. At one point Nell panics and asks, "What if I missed a turn somewhere--missed my own future?" The stories are delivered to us like random memories. Some of the stories are told in the first person, others are written as third-person narratives. The stories span more than six decades and do not appear in any chronological order. But by the end, this structure makes complete sense and brings the reader full circle from the end, back to the beginning. There is much to be contemplated at what stories are missing from the work. For example, there are no stories about Nell's daughter or stepsons. What is there are stories about Nell and her husband, parents, sister, and friends. There are also stories about the beloved animals in her life: a horse named Gladys, a dog named Howl, and a much-loved hand-reared baby lamb that had the misfortune of being born a male. Unnamed, this poor future heartache was destined for the dinner table. Attwood admits that many of events in these stores have strong autobiographical roots. This becomes achingly apparent in the last two stories where Atwood delivers a heart-wrenching first-person narrative about--what is purposefully in this story--an unnamed mature protagonist serving as loving caretaker of rapidly declining elderly parents. These parents could easily fit in with what we know about Nell, and what we know about Atwood. These pieces show Atwood at the height of her talent. These are pieces woven of pure magic and unconditionally every-lasting love. There is a character at the end of the father's story, a brilliant young entomologist from India that comes to Canada to conduct field study with the father at his summer entomology lab located in the wilds of Labrador. He appears on the scene like a mirage, a pampered upper class man in English summer whites hauling along his suitcase and tennis racket into the mosquito-infested lake lands of wild northern Canada. This character springs to life so vividly that the reader can imagine him virtually popping off the page and asking: "Why am I here, on this page, made real in this strange book?" Atwood seems to make the character dimly aware of his own existence--his own fictional immortality. This makes the reader ponder: "Does Atwood realize that she has given her own parents a for

This book is a good book for a summer day - nothing that Atwood writes has a usual ending where everything is summed up nicely and live happily ever after. Disfunctional families can be very interesting.

Margaret Attwood has to be the most brilliant writer of our time. Her descriptive brilliance penetrates deep into your soul as her words take wing. Her latest work, Moral Disorder, continues the high standard of her other works such as Cat's Eye, Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake. No matter what genre she dips into, the results are astounding. This book of short stories, are all connected through the lives of the women of one family. They could be read separately, but together each story adds to the family portrait giving the reader a panoramic view of the three central characters of the book- mother and two daughters. The way Margaret Attwood describes a daughter trying to get through to her aging mother, lost in reverie or some other country in her mind, makes you want to weep. Her prose is exquisite. I have never ever never been disappointed with a Margaret Attwood piece and this one is no exception.