Name: Stone Mattress
ISBN: 9780385539128

Margaret Atwood

Presents a collection of short stories featuring a widowed writer who is guided by her late husband's voice and a woman whose genetic abnormality causes her to be mistaken for a vampire.

Nine Tales

Stone Mattress

Ryan Mateyk

What a saucy collection of (mostly) Seniors Behaving Badly! I liked it and knew I would but I'm biased by my love for all things Atwood.

Read this for a class back in college and I had to message my prof years after to ask for the title cuz I wanna read it again

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE HANDMAID'S TALE AND ALIAS GRACE A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. 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. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire, and a crime committed long ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite. In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle - and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game. * Praise for Stone Mattress 'Dark and witty tales from the gleefully inventive Margaret Atwood. Witty verve, imaginative inventiveness and verbal sizzle vivify every page' -SUNDAY TIMES 'Atwood has characters here close to death, dead already, unwittingly doomed or - in one memorable case - freeze-dried; but her own curiosity, enthusiasm and sheer storytelling panache remain alive and kicking. Anyone keen to consign literary fiction to an early grave will have to deal with her first' -INDEPENDENT 'Atwood's prose is so sharp and sly that the effect is bracing rather than bleak' -GUARDIAN

Nine Wicked Tales

Andrew John Kinney

I almost always enjoy Margaret Atwood's work, and this one was no exception. I'll add to this review as time allows, but I am now interested in reading Atwood's earlier collection of short stories, Moral Disorder.

"In this extraordinary collection, Margaret Atwood gives us nine unforgettable tales that reveal the grotesque, delightfully wicked facets of humanity"--

Alexia

I do love Atwood’s writing but I’ve only substantially enjoyed two of the nine stories in the collection regarding the story itself (Lusus Naturae and Alphinland.) The other la were okay, except for Dark Lady and The Dead Hand Loves You, which merited only a “meh”. Nonetheless, I will definitely continue delving into her work.

Amanda Wells

What a great collection of stories. I loved the way the first three intertwined with one another - it delighted me when I first realized we were in the same "world" at the beginning of the second. All the stories drew me in though, and I was curious to see how they'd all end. The last one was challenging in concept, but the main character was so lovely - I had to see it through to make sure she was alright! 

I'd recommend this collection to just about anyone. Especially if you are sick of reading about young characters falling in love, or young characters finding themselves, or young characters solving a murder or two.

Anusha Rangan

A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. 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. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire, and a crime committed long ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatalite. In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle - and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.

Melissa Railey

In these nine dazzlingly inventive and rewarding stories, Margaret Atwood's signature dark humour, playfulness, and deadly seriousness are in abundance. This is classic Atwood, and she is at the very top of her form.

Stone Mattress Nine Tales

Reviews

Highlights