So, this MARM I have found myself reading more Margaret Atwood than I thought I would manage – and as always it has been a joy. I am currently into the last seventy pages or so of MaddAddam – the third book in that trilogy of the same name. Last week I read Moral Disorder – and I absolutely loved it – a definite candidate for my book of the month. A collection of short stories – although that isn’t really an accurate description – as the stories though non-chronological feature the same character throughout. Moral Disorder can be read almost like a novel – in a similar way to Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. I enjoy short stories a lot – and Atwood’s Stone Mattress had been my favourite of her collections until I read this one.
In these stories of the life of one woman – who is could easily be said, bears more than a passing resemblance to Atwood herself – the reader is taken on a journey across several decades. As well as not being entirely chronological – the tense changes too – many of the stories are told in the first person – others in the third person. While this might prevent us confusing Moral Disorder with being a novel – what does emerge is a wonderfully complete portrait of a woman’s life – the ups and downs of family life – from childhood through to late middle age. While we can see these stories as being very autobiographical – which I sense they are – the view is actually much broader – for me there was a sense of an entire generation represented through one woman, and her family.
The collection opens with Bad News in which a woman (who we come to know as Nell in subsequent stories) in late middle age reflects on age and what it means – how tenses define our lives – and this extract perfectly summing up how the rest of the book can be seen.
“These are the tenses that define us now: past tense, back then; future tense, not yet. We live in the small window between them, the space we’ve only recently come to think of as still, and really it’s no smaller than anyone else’s window.”
This view of past, present future is one I love in fiction as it highlights how connected everything is – how we as human beings are strongly connected to our pasts – and how the now we are in is so transitory.
In the second story The art of cooking and serving – we return to the summer when Nell was eleven – waiting anxiously for her mother to give birth to her new sibling. The anxiety come from the snatches of adult conversation that she has overheard – how her mother is getting a bit old for pregnancy – something might go wrong. Nell is knitting a layette for the baby to keep her busy – her father has made her responsible for looking after her mother while she is in this dangerous condition, the weight of responsibility is heavy – for the girl doesn’t really understand what it is that might happen. During the summer Nell and her mother go to the lakeside cabin where the family frequently holiday in summer – Nell’s father is away – and so the responsibility for her mother’s welfare rests on Nell’s young shoulders. They are a long way from a doctor – and Nell works out a plan for getting help should she need it.
The next story – The Headless Horseman – takes place about three years later – and now Nell is helping her mother look after her baby sister a lot. The child is a sensitive little thing, cries easily but adores her big sister following her around and wanting to be involved in everything she does. When Nell makes a headless horseman costume for Halloween – the result is a predictable scream fest – the toddler is terrified. What I loved in this story is how it switches between two time periods – the one in which the teenage Nell makes a Halloween costume that is less than successful – and one in which the adult siblings driving together to see their mother reminisce about the headless horseman costume. Anyone with a sibling must recognise that – those stories we keep and tell each other over and over – all those remember whens.
In The Last Duchess – she recalls a high school teacher Miss Bessie – as Nell and her school friends edge nearer the possibility of ‘going on’ – ie university.
In The other Place – Nell is a young woman, having grown up in one time – the social landscape around her has changed considerably.
“At the time I’d set out, all women were expected to get married and many of my friends had already done so. But by the end of this period – it was only eight years, not so long after all – a wave had swept through, changing the landscape completely. Miniskirts and bell-bottoms had made a brief appearance, to be replaced immediately by sandals and tie-dyed T-shirts. Beards had sprouted, communes had sprung up, thin girls with long straight hair and no brassieres were everywhere. Sexual jealousy was like using the wrong fork, marriage was a joke, and those already married found their once-solid unions crumbling like defective stucco. You were supposed to hang loose, to collect experiences, to be a rolling stone.”
Through subsequent stories, like Monopoly, White Horse and the title story all told in the third person we watch Nell as she negotiates her relationship with Tig, the man she falls in love with. He is separated but still married with two boys – all of which her parents deeply disapprove. They live for a time on a farm, it’s not quite a rural idyll, there are difficulties to be negotiated and the locals think the barn is haunted. There are some chickens, then a few cows and an old white horse called Gladys and Nell’s sister comes to visit.
Moral Disorder is both touching and funny, keenly, and wisely observed – I’m surprised this collection isn’t talked about as much as some of Atwood’s other works. It really is a masterclass.
This one had passed me by, possibly because it was published before I learnt to love short stories, but it sounds wonderful.
Yes, it is a fabulous collection I think it’s one you might like.
I don’t think I’ve ever read any of her short stories, but you tempt me to explore further.
I would definitely recommend trying her short stories, I do think they are excellent. This one and Stone Mattress particularly strong.
This collection sounds tempting. I only read her collection Wilderness Tips, and I loved it. Good to know about Moral Disorder, I am adding it to my tbr list now. Thank you for your review, Ali! 🙂
Yes Wilderness Tips is also really good. If you enjoyed that I would expect that you would like this one too.
It’s taken time for me to appreciate linked short stories like this and ‘Olive Kitteridge’, but I love what a writer like Margaret Atwood can do with them. It’s wonderful that you’re finding so much enjoyment in her work right now.
I think Atwood is so good at exploring aspects of family and womanhood so a collection of linked stories like this plays to her storytelling strengths.
Lovely post, Ali. I read this pre-blog and loved it – she’s certainly mastered the art of short works, and I love it when there are linked stories like this.
She really is brilliant at the shorter form, these linked stories show her ability to explore women’s lives.
I haven’t read nearly enough Margaret Atwood and am appreciating your reviews, Ali. Thanks.
Thank you hope you enjoy reading more Atwood soon.
Wow, you have read a lot of MA this month, well done! These sound excellent, not a collection I’d heard of although I’m realising my Atwood knowledge resides in the past rather!
Yes, I only found out about this one a year or so ago, probably because of Margaret Atwood reading month. It’s only more recently that I have read her short stories.
I read this several years ago and loved it. I can still remember images from the stories. I loved their time spent on the farm. I’d love to re-read it, but there are still too many others I haven’t read at all!
I feel like that about so many books in my house! I also loved the time on the farm. So glad I read this.
I remember being puzzled when the POV changed for the first time…but feeling the “rightness” of it all, once I’d read further. It does give an unusual sense of completeness, doesn’t it. You’ve checked off quite a few Bingo squares too, and making a nice little confetti pattern across the grid! And I agree, it doesn’t seem fair that her stories are not more often discussed/lauded; I chalk it up to the anti-short-story brigade (an amorphous but spirited group). LOL
It really does give a sense of completeness. I think there are a lot of readers out there who shy away from short stories, which is such a shame.
I’ve barely touched the surface with Margaret Atwood – Handmaid’s Tale of course, The Blind Assassin and Hagseed sums it up. I get the impression she is a very versatile author?
She is certainly very versatile, this book very different indeed to MaddAddam which I will be reviewing on Monday.
[…] Short stories were well represented, with Mel at The Reading Life dipping into Dancing Girls with “The Man from Mars”, Rebecca at BookishBeck reading Wilderness Tips and Ali reading a later collection, Moral Disorder. […]