BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA March 15, 2018 Moral Disorder Margaret Atwood Introduction Margaret Atwood has frequently been cited as one of the foremost writers of our time. Moral Disorder could be seen as a collection of eleven stories that is almost a novel ... or a novel broken up into eleven stories. It resembles a photograph album - a series of clearly observed moments that trace the course of a life, and the lives intertwined with it - those of parents, siblings, children, friends, enemies, teachers and even animals. And as in a photograph album, times change; every decade is here, from the 1930s through the 50s, 60s and 70s to the present day. The settings are equally varied: large cities, suburbs, farms, northern forests. By turns funny, moving, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and inimitable Contents: style to their best advantage. As the The New York Times has said, 'Atwood has complete access to her Introduction 1 people's emotional histories, complete understanding of their hearts and imaginations.' Biography: 2 Margaret Atwood [https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/moral-disorder- 9780747581628/] Two reviews from 3-4 The Guardian The Tent - by 5 Margaret Atwood Notes 6 Page 2 Biography: Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood is a Canadian puritanical, theocratic dystopia in writer born on November 18, which a select group of fertile 1939 in Ottawa. The women — a condition which has internationally-known author has become a rarity — are made to written award-winning poetry, bear children for corporate male short-stories and novels, overlords. including The Circle Game (1966), The Handmaid’s Atwood is a prolific writer who Tale (1985), The Blind has penned additional novels that Assassin (2000), Oryx and include Cat’s Eye (1989) and The Crake (2003) and The Tent (2006). Blind Assassin, which won the Her works have been translated Booker Prize. Continuing her into an array of different languages output of speculative fiction with and seen several screen real-world parallels, the new adaptations, with both Handmaid's millennium saw Atwood releasing Tale and Alias Grace becoming the environment focused miniseries in 2017. MaddAddam trilogy, consisting of Oryx and Crake (2003), The Atwood’s first published work Year of the Flood (2009) was the pamphlet of and MaddAddam (2013). In poetry Double Persephone (1961), addition to The Penelopiad (2005) published via Hawkshead Press. and The Tent (2006), she also More poetry followed during the released the book of essays In decade as seen with the Other Worlds: SF and the Human books Talismans for Imagination, looking at the Children (1965) and The Animals in nuances of sci-fi/fantasy genre That Country (1968). She then writing. published her first novel, The Edible Woman, in 1969, a In 2016, Atwood published the metaphoric, witty work about the graphic novel Angel Catbird, an social status of a woman about to undertaking done with fellow wed. Canadian artist Johnnie Christmas which profiles the A tenacious spirit, Atwood would super-heroic adventures of a later describe taking Greyhound genetic engineer who becomes buses to read at gymnasiums and part feline, part owl. The work is sell books. Atwood continued to slated to be followed up by the publish poetry as well as the February 2017 release, Angel novels Surfacing (1973), Lady Catbird: To Castle Catula. Oracle (1976) and Life Before Man (1980). Several more books Atwood lives in Toronto with followed, yet it was 1985’s The her partner Graeme Gibson. The Handmaid’s Tale that garnered two have a daughter. Atwood a massive wave of [https://www.biography.com/people/ acclaim and popularity. A margaret-atwood-9191928] prescient warning over what could be, the book chronicles a Page 3 Two reviews from The Guardian Eleven-piece suite are definite clues that Nell is the works so well I don't know; by Ursula K. Le Guin protagonist even when not perhaps because "The Bad named. Such clues are needed, News" is a stunning opener, Most collections of short stories for there isn't very much in the electric with wit, energy, by a single author are grab-bags, first-person stories of childhood Atwood's achingly keen sense of but some approach or achieve and adolescence to connect the fear and pain. She has never been real unity; this is a different unity girl to the woman Nell. The last sharper, dryer, funnier, sadder. from that of the novel, and two stories concern a woman's And there was wisdom in not deserves some attention. The experience with her father putting this story last, because gaps between stories preclude entering dementia, her mother the last two are about dying, the the supporting structures of in extreme old age. The end, and this one isn't, quite - conventional plot. If the stories daughter may well be Nell, the not yet. "Not yet is aspirated, tell a story, it must be read in parents may be the parents of like the h in honour. It's the glimpses, and through the gaps - the child in the earlier stories, silent not yet. We don't say it a risky gambit, but one that but I had no feeling of out loud." offers singular freedom of recognition, of rejoining the "These are the tenses that define movement and ironic same people at a later stage of us now: past tense, back then; opportunity. In such episodic life. The book did not quite future tense, not yet. We live in narratives, character, place or form a whole for me, an the small window between them, theme replace plot as unifying architecture, a life story the space we've only recently elements. Many collections that however episodic. The glimpses come to think of as still, and pretend to unity merely fake it, are brilliant, but the gaps are really it's no smaller than anyone but we need a name for a book wide. What the stories do have else's window." that is truly a story told in in common, though, is a clear stories. Could we call it a story eye, a fine wit, and a command suite? The uncomplaining, absolute of language so complete it's accuracy of this is most Moral Disorder is such a suite, invisible except when it's admirable. "The Bad News" consisting of 11 short stories. dazzling. really has some news for its readers. Place, perhaps the commonest One piece is dramatically and cement of the story suite, is not effectively out of place. Starting None of the other stories very important, but the stories with the second story, we have a single protagonist, a entirely escapes conventionality, follow Nell through the years not a word I'd expect to use central character- or I think they from her childhood with sister do. She is variable, elusive, even about Atwood. The subjects are and parents, through the familiar tropes of the current a bit slippery. This is, after all, a vicissitudes of semi-marriage, book by Margaret Atwood. short story: miseries and the trials of amateur farming and confusions of childhood, city Seven of the stories are told by late parenthood, and at last to people learning life on a an "I" who remains nameless, her middle age, the daughter of subsistence farm, dysfunctional four from the third-person point parents at the edge of death. family members, Alzheimer's. of view of "Nell". It's easy to But the first story in the book is They are not quite predictable, project Nell into all the stories, chronologically the last, a but near it, though there is a because they run in portrait of Nell and her partner patience, a kindness in the tone chronological order from Tig in their own old age, when which is not common. Apart childhood to age, the central they are the parents on the from in that first story, Atwood figure is always female, and there edge of death. Why this reversal Page 4 doesn't pull any of the surprises, disorderly beginnings, endings than simply the owner of a the narrative flights and dodges and in betweens of a life. And hamster from whom the mother she's so good at. There the old not in any particular order. caught a thyroid disease. Canadian couple morph quietly The stories present incidents One day, Nell notices how into an old Roman couple in a from the life of one person: she's beautiful the winter landscape is, small Gallic town called Glanum, the first-person narrator in some but recognises that she would which Nell and Tig once visited as and 'Nell' in others, and usually never photograph it for her tourists. Breakfast is good uncertain about what kind of girl Christmas cards. It was, she says, whether in Toronto or Glanum, or woman she wants to be. An 'beautiful in real life, but too but the world is not in good intellectual with pimples on her overdone for art'. Atwood, too, bum? Or 'practical and works hard to circumvent cheap shape. Terrorism, barbarians mundane', like her parents? And emotion or consolation. These threaten the empire. The news is how can she determine which stories are not simply all bad - the news is always the role is an impersonation and unsentimental, they're rigorously same and always bad, and what which the reality? 'A sister anti-sentimental and, at their are two old people supposed to pretending to be a monster or a darkest, they're also at their do about it? This gentle, plausible monster pretending to be a funniest. slide into a fantasy that deepens sister?' It's hard to tell.