Stone Mattress
Nine Wicked Tales
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4.1 • 84 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments—a thrilling, funny, and thought-provoking collection of stories that affirms Atwood as our greatest creator of worlds—and as an incisive chronicler of our darkest impulses.
“Alphinland,” the first of three loosely linked tales, introduces us to a fantasy writer who is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. In “Lusus Naturae,” a young woman, monstrously transformed by a genetic defect, is mistaken for a vampire. And in the title story, a woman who has killed four husbands discovers an opportunity to exact vengeance on the first man who ever wronged her.
Stone Mattress is a collection of unforgettable tales that reveal the grotesque, delightfully wicked facets of humanity.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Margaret Atwood’s collection of short stories features a pioneer in fantasy fiction, a cantankerous scholar, and an Arctic explorer with a grudge, among other engaging characters. The loosely connected tales that make up Stone Mattress explore themes of mortality, aging, memory, and retribution. Atwood pulls you in with her crisp prose, flesh-and-bone personas, and a sense of humor that propels the often-dark material in surprising directions. With a range of voices at her command, the revered Canadian writer delivers a delightfully masterful and contemplative work of literature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Atwood, a bestselling master of fiction, delivers a stunning collection her first since 2006's Moral Disorder. Most of the nine stories feature women who have been wronged as girls but recover triumphantly as adults. Atwood brings her biting wit to bear on the battle of the sexes. The first three stories in the book "Alphinland," "Revenant," and "Dark Lady" are linked by a pretentious poet and his girlfriends, who best him professionally and personally as he ages into an impotent, disgruntled old man with a wife 30 years his junior: "He probably has more horns on his head as the bard would say than a hundred headed snail." Corpses are found, as in "The Freeze-Dried Groom" or not found, as in the title story, set on an Arctic cruise, in which a woman takes her revenge on the high school "Mr. Hearthrob, Mr. Senior Football Star, Mr. Astounding Catch... Mr. Shit" of 50 years before. Readers love Atwood's women, despite, or because of, who they are and what they do. Add in her wild imagination women conversing with dead husbands; genetic missteps that produce a girl with yellow eyes, pink teeth, and "long, dark chest hair"; and costumed "little people" who appear to an elderly nursing home resident and it's clear that this grande dame is at the top of her game.
Customer Reviews
Great Collection
Like many, my first exposure to Margaret Atwood’s writing was The Handmaid’s Tale during my late teens. Since then I’ve been hooked and this collection of short stories was no different. I love her sense of place, people and most of all her wicked sense of humor when approaching both of those things.
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