Product Description

Margaret Atwood has frequently been cited as one of the foremost writers of our time. "Moral Disorder", her new work of fiction, 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. The first story, "The Bad News," is set in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. Then the narrative switches time, as the central character moves through childhood and adolescence, in "The Art of Cooking and Serving", "The Headless Horseman" and "My Last Duchess". We follow her into young adulthood in "The Other Place", and then through a complex relationship, traced in four of the stories - "Monopoly", "Moral Disorder", "White Horse" and "The Entities". The last two stories, "The Labrador Fiasco" and "The Boys at the Lab", deal with the heartbreaking old age of parents, but circle back to childhood again, to complete the cycle. By turns funny, moving, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking and deeply personal, "Moral Disorder" displays Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and inimitable style to their best advantage. As the "New York Times" has said, 'Atwood has complete access to her people's emotional histories, complete understanding of their hearts and imaginations.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158559 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Review
'Margaret Atwood deserves an adjective - Atwoodian - in recognition of her virtuoso wit and unmistakeable style.' Chicago Tribune 'Everything she forms in words has substance and weight.' Daily Telegraph 'Margaret Atwood is one of the most brilliant and unpredictable novelists alive.' Literary Review

Spectator
`Ingenious and perceptive. . . deserves to become a quiet
classic'

Synopsis
Margaret Atwood has frequently been cited as one of the foremost writers of our time. "Moral Disorder", her new work of fiction, 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. The first story, "The Bad News," is set in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. Then the narrative switches time, as the central character moves through childhood and adolescence, in "The Art of Cooking and Serving", "The Headless Horseman" and "My Last Duchess". We follow her into young adulthood in "The Other Place", and then through a complex relationship, traced in four of the stories - "Monopoly", "Moral Disorder", "White Horse" and "The Entities".

The last two stories, "The Labrador Fiasco" and "The Boys at the Lab", deal with the heartbreaking old age of parents, but circle back to childhood again, to complete the cycle. By turns funny, moving, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking and deeply personal, "Moral Disorder" displays Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and inimitable style to their best advantage. As the "New York Times" has said, 'Atwood has complete access to her people's emotional histories, complete understanding of their hearts and imaginations.'

Customer Reviews

Great book of intertwined stories
This is the first Margaret Atwood book I have read and I was very impressed. The writing was amazing and the short stories follow on from each other almost seamlessly. Each story portrays a different age - from childhood (with the birth of a younger sister) throughout life up until late middle age (with nursing an aged mother).

In fact the stories are so connected, I had actually lost sight of the fact that they were short stories - and therefore I was suprised when the voice changed half way through the book from the first to the third person. I had become used to the more personal approach and felt a little disappointed - it took a while to adjust to the new tone.

On the surface a careless collection, but underneath ....
What an unusual book! On the surface it is a series of short stories, almost thrown carelessly together and telling the life of a Canadian woman from childhood through to old age.

Along the way, various themes are introduced, some glancingly and others returned to from varying viewpoints in a number of different stories. Children and their parents are visited at the beginnings of life for one and nearing the end for the other. There is a wonderful account of a teenage girl becoming immersed in the study of literature with `a lot of ground still to cover' before the crucial end-of-school-years examination. Atwood skewers the 1970s - from the penniless central character, Nell, painting a second hand dining table orange through to `adultery' being `not a cool word' where `to pronounce it was a social gaffe'. A sister's mental health problems appear at times severe and deteriorating irreparably whilst at others they impress more as a misperception or a temporary fluctuation.

Perhaps the most persistent theme is the centrality of stories, either in the form of established literature or as fondly repeated favourite anecdotes from real life. But what is really distinctive about this book is its structure - eleven short stories, not all arranged chronologically, some written in the first and some the third person. The position in time of the `author' of some of these is also unusual; a story can end with a paragraph or two saying in effect that the events just described had taken place years ago and that things are now very different.

One interpretation of this strange structure is that the stories, some of which were published separately over a number of years, have merely been shoe-horned to hang untidily together in book form. But surely Atwood is too skilled and careful a writer to succumb to such laziness - it would take very little effort, after all, to tweak and rearrange these into a conventional cradle to grave account.

I prefer instead to see this as a subtle statement about the ways in which we really give an account to ourselves of our lives in an episodic and thematic fashion. So, instead of `chapter one my childhood', `chapter two my teens' and so on, we might think of long-lived themes such as our changing relationships with our parents and perhaps more intense and time-constrained events such as the death of somebody close or sexual awakening during puberty.

And in the book Atwood's themes can be seen to have a beginning, a middle and, in true short story fashion, a gentle thud or a wistful speculation with which to finish. There is a sense that she is experimenting not only with the deep structure of book composition but also with the way in which we `author' our own lives.

In many ways this is not one of Margaret Atwood's `big books' but I found it an extremely enjoyable and accessible read - and one that won't yet let me put it down and move on to something new.

Intertwining lives
The previous reviewer has summed this up quite nicely actually. It is a lovely book and well worth reading but I didn't enjoy the last two 'stories' as much as the others, hence 4/5 rather than 5/5.

The book will be enjoyed by Margaret Atwood fans and I think readers new to her work might enjoy it as a starting point because it's a simple but fascinating read. Nothing complicated, no morals as such. It's purely a story about family life. This edition doesn't say that it's a series of stories on the front whilst others do. Therefore if you want a complete novel I'd select something else. Whilst it isn't short stories as such, in that the same characters keep surfacing; the stories are complete units of life. Having said this, they all link together somehow.

Short enough to read in one sitting or spread out longer depending on how much you like to take in or deliberate as you're reading. Having finished this I could easily go straight on to another book by her which is testament to how different each of her books are; usually I'd have to have a break in between authors.

Well worth reading!