Synopses & Reviews
Margaret Atwood's latest brilliant collection of short stories follows the life of a single character, seen as a girl growing up the 1930s, a young woman in the 50s and 60s, and, in the present day, half of a couple, no longer young, reflecting on the new state of the world. Each story focuses on the ways relationships transform a character's life: a woman's complex love for a married man, the grief upon the death of parents and the joy with the birth of children, the realization of what growing old with someone you love really means. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage.
Review
"Sharply focused, intensely personal....Moral Disorder is domestic realism at its most convincing....These are poignant stories crammed with richly nostalgic detail, rueful, wise, elegiac." Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
Review
"Elegant....In Moral Disorder, Atwood travels deep into the expanse of memories and language built up over her writing lifetime and offers a handful of gems to illuminate our times." The Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
"Searingly intelligent....[These are] beguiling narratives that Atwood unspools with signature grace and incisiveness." Elle
Review
"[A]lternatively humorous and heart-wrenching, occasionally sardonic and always brutally honest in the depiction of our often contorted relationships with one another, with nature, and with ourselves." Library Journal
Synopsis
A brilliant collection of connected short stories following the life of a single woman, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Handmaid s Tale.
In these eleven tales, Margaret Atwood brings to life the story of one remarkable character, following her from girlhood in the 1930s, through her coming-of-age in the 50s and 60s, and into the present day where, no longer young, she reflects on the new state of the world. Each story focuses on the ways relationships transform a life: a woman s complex love for a married man, the grief upon the death of parents and the joy with the birth of children, and the realization of what growing old with someone you love really means. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorderdisplays Atwood s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage.
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Synopsis
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale
This brilliant collection of connected short stories strings together several decades of moments in the life of one woman--as an ambitious girl in the 1930s, as a young professional coming of age in the uncertain '50s and '60s, and as half of a couple growing old together. In a series of vividly evoked settings that span cities, backwoods, and farm country, we see this woman contending over time with an unstable sister, a married lover, aging parents, mystifying stepchildren, vulnerable farm animals, and her own changing self. By turns funny, lyrical, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Margaret Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage.
About the Author
Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, her novels include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize; The Year of the Flood; and her most recent, MaddAddam. She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award, and lives in Toronto with the writer Graeme Gibson.