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First Published:
Sep 2014, 288 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2015, 304 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Lucy Rock
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Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships.
Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, Moral Disorder, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships bringing to mind her award-winning 1996 novel, Alias Grace.
A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband in "Alphinland," the first of three loosely linked stories about the romantic geometries of a group of writers and artists. In "The Freeze-Dried Bridegroom," a man who bids on an auctioned storage space has a surprise. In "Lusus Naturae," a woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire. In "Torching the Dusties," an elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence.
And in "Stone Mattress," a long-ago crime is avenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite. In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.
ALPHINLAND
The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant. Wherever it hits, it crystallizes into a granulated coating of ice. Under the streetlights it looks so beautiful: like fairy silver, thinks Constance. But then, she would think that; she's far too prone to enchantment. The beauty is an illusion, and also a warning: there's a dark side to beauty, as with poisonous butterflies. She ought to be considering the dangers, the hazards, the grief this ice storm is going to bring to many; is already bringing, according to the television news.
The tv screen is a flat high-definition one that Ewan bought so he could watch hockey and football games on it. Constance would rather have the old fuzzy one back, with its strangely orange people and its habit of rippling and fading: there are some things that do not fare well in high definition. She resents the pores, the wrinkles, the nose hairs, the impossibly whitened teeth shoved right up in ...
From the simply adequate to the most superb, Stone Mattress is an admirable, off-kilter study of death, love and vulnerability - often all three. Within these pages we are reminded of our own rapidly approaching mortality and, against all odds, see our desire to be loved in the strangest of tales...continued
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(Reviewed by Lucy Rock).
A "stone mattress" in the titular tale of this short story collection serves as a painful reminder of past events. It is also Margaret Atwood's nickname for fascinating geological formations called stromatolites.
Stromatolites (from the Greek 'stroma' = mattress/layer and 'lithos' = stone) are most easily described as living fossils. Blue-green algae, a type of cyanobacteria, trap the sediment around it with its sticky coating. The algae absorb both carbon dioxide and calcium dissolved in water, which then react to form calcium carbonate, which provides a limestone scaffolding for further expansion. This is a hugely lengthy process (it can take a stromatolite 100 years to grow just 5 cm) that eventually results in rock-like ...
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