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.
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[The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant - ALPHINLAND]***
(Virago, 24 September 2015, first published 28 August 2014, ebook, 320 pages, Around the Year in 52 Books 2019, a book with a number in the title or on the front cover, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I'm a huge fan of Atwood. I really enjoyed this collection of stories. Most collections have one or two stories that don't work but that isn't the case here. Every story is strong and worthy of praise. The best stories were Dark Lady, I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth and The Dead Hand Loves You. All of the stories are good but these shone a little brighter. The stories are quite dark and have a lot of humour in them. I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth is a spin-off from Atwood's fantastic novel, The Robber Bride. These stories are well worth getting lost in.