Excerpt from Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She doesn't say "after his death," even to herself. She doesn't use the D?word about him at all. He might overhear it and be hurt or offended, or perhaps confused, or even angry. It's one of her not?fully?formulated beliefs that Ewan doesn't realize that he's dead.

She sits at Ewan's desk, swathed in Ewan's black plush bathrobe. Black plush bathrobes for men were cutting edge,
when? The '90s? She'd bought this bathrobe herself, as a Christmas present. Ewan always resisted her attempts to make him cutting edge, not that those attempts had lasted much beyond the bathrobe; she'd run out of interest in how he looked to others.

She wears this bathrobe not for heat but for comfort: it makes her feel that Ewan might still be in the house physically, just around the corner. She hasn't washed it since he died; she doesn't want it to smell of laundry detergent instead of Ewan.

Oh Ewan, she thinks. We had such good times! All gone now. Why so fast? She wipes her eyes on the black plush sleeve.

"Pull yourself together," says Ewan. He never likes it when she sniffles.

"Right," she says. She squares her shoulders, adjusts the cushion on Ewan's ergonomic desk chair, turns the computer on.

Excerpted from Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 2014 by Margaret Atwood. Excerpted by permission of Nan A. Talese, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.