My Amazon and Goodreads review of Old Babes in the Wood: Stories by Margaret Atwood (Rating 5) – She (We) Ain’t Dead Yet. Margaret Atwood’s story collection Old Babes in the Wood is rich with the insights this author has bestowed on readers for decades. My favorites comprise the sections that bracket the book, in which the recently widowed Nell recalls her long marriage to Tig. The writing is poignant. Yet, in characteristic Atwood fashion, grief’s bellyaches are tempered with memory’s belly laughs: oddball friends, quirky routines, off-kilter misunderstandings. The pair are as predictable as any old married couple, yet they surprise us and one another with their secrets. Even those discovered posthumously. Tig is dead, (or as Nell says, unable to complete the thought, “Now that Tig.”), yet he is still very much present. And, Atwood reminds us, so is that old babe, Nell. She muses on widowhood: how to remain relevant, not relegated to the dust bin; to see meandering minds as sane reflections of a nonlinear world, not signs of a brain gone bonkers. The Handmaid’s Tale aside, I prefer Atwood’s reality stories to her speculative fiction, but for readers who gravitate to the latter, there is plenty in the book’s middle section to satisfy them, notably an amusing but cautionary tale of a communication impasse with the aliens who rescue us after we’ve destroyed our own planet. And for those who relish the wit with which Atwood punctures (especially male) authority, she offers a gut-busting pseudo-feminist treatise on witches and other flying female villains. Atwood’s stories are often deceptively simple but they reverberate with deeper meaning. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I know the effort expended to make hard-earned prose appear easy on the page. Atwood works hard, and while we play with her words, we willing work hard to wrest the most out of them. Old Babes in the Wood immerses readers in the thoughts, feelings, and sensations of aging. The woods are perilous, the past’s undergrowth lurks to trip us up. Yet a lush canopy ahead lures us forward. Atwood prods us on. Like the author, we ain’t dead yet!
Atwood at her poignant and witty best
Why writers read: “The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.” – Stephen King
