Stone Mattress

 Stone Mattress

Reviewed By  Grasshopper2       November 3, 2014

 

Author  Margaret Atwood

Distributor:     
ISBN:                 9781408857175
Publisher:         Bloomsbury Publishing
Release Date:    

   Website:   http://www.bloomsbury.com

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It would be wonderful to meet Margaret Attwood and talk with her for a while to get a glimpse of how she sees things, what she thinks and what arouses her interest. It would be amazing. As Alice Munro says, “her writing has power, grace and variety” and this book displays all of those traits amid the range of fascinating short stories.

This book of nine stories has great breadth of ideas and simplicity in its writing. The author has finely tuned her ideas towards a variety of emotions people may encounter. Then she goes a step further and discloses how these emotions evolved, or leaves you to imagine how this could have happened. Her writing about the voice in one of the character’s head is so real that one understands immediately the doubts, demands, and grumbles this voice displays.

The stories vary hugely, from a recently widowed fantasy writer, whose dead husband guides her steps through a blizzard, to an auction hunter who buys the contents of containers left behind. When he opens the container to discover if anything is of value he finds a complete wedding inside. Flowers, wedding dress, cake and oops, there is the groom, beautifully suited out but wrapped in plastic and quite dead. A very disgruntled bride?

Revenge is sweet for Verna who was raped by a bully when she was young. She was thrown out of home and gradually made her way through life by befriending wealthy, elderly men. She trained as a physiotherapist and was able to relieve their aches and pains and marry them.  Unfortunately they died “Oh dear, maybe too much Viagra”.

 Vera meets the perpetrator of her crime on a cruise. It is so easy to lure him on a walk where a fossil is used to dispose of him. The fossil is washed and neatly put back in the ship’s collection, to be handled and looked at by many.

You could say there is a dark side to these stories. The writing though is so imaginative and thought provoking and yes humorous, the stories are a delight to read.

If you enjoy reading short stories and great writing, then this book is for you.

 

Fiction