000 02150c a2200229 a 4500
001 026630
005 20231009193238.0
008 080310s2006 nyu 000 1 eng
010 _a2006044589
020 _a9780385503846
082 0 0 _aFIC ATW
100 1 _aAtwood, Margaret
_d(, 1939-)
245 1 0 _aMoral disorder
_b: stories
_c/ Margaret Atwood
250 _a1st ed
260 _aNew York
_b: Nan A. Talese
_c, c2006.
300 _a225 p.
_c; 22 cm.
505 0 0 _aThe bad news -- The art of cooking and serving --The headless horseman -- My last duchess --The other place -- Monopoly --Moral disorder -- White horse --The entities --The labrador fiasco --The boys at the lab.
520 _aThis collection of 11 interconnected short stories opens as a Canadian woman named Nell and her longtime partner, Gilbert (known as Tig), face aging together into an uncertain future. Subsequent tales go back into Nell's childhood-spent partly in the Canadian wilderness with her entomologist father-and proceeds through her adolescence and academic career, culminating in a series of teaching and editing positions. The stories also move through North American cities and lovers and Nell's relationship with Tig, his two adolescent sons, and their life on a farm. "White Horse" is a strong and evocative account of Nell's relationship with younger sister Lizzie, who is schizophrenic, and with Gladys, a white horse rescued from neglect. The final three tales, "The Entities," "The Labrador Fiasco," and "The Boys at the Lab," bring us full circle to the themes of aging and death, as witnessed by caretakers. In these reflective selections, Atwood, one of North America's most prominent and prolific authors (e.g., The Handmaid's Tale, the Booker Prize-winning The Blind Assassin) turns inward, as autobiographical as she has been to date. The result is alternatively 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.
650 0 _aAutobiographical fiction, Canadian
655 7 _aShort stories
942 _cMO
999 _c266575
_d266575