Review: Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood
Monday, July 04, 2016
I think that the short story
is a hard craft to master. I’ve read some truly awful short stories, finished
some collections and then asked myself why I put myself through the last 200+
pages, found stories with so many plot holes and missing pieces that they
didn’t even form a cohesive story. To write a short story is to write something
that can be fully contained, within reason, with such limited word space. The
story has to be compelling without being large, the characters engaging whilst
still being plausible, the writing needs to grab attention from the very first
line and hold it for the duration of the 2,000-10,000 words. There’s a definite
art to it, and finding a collection of short stories that champions the format
is always cause for celebration.
When Stone Mattress first came out, I had little doubt that it would be
a fabulous short story collection. Margaret Atwood has been one of my favourite
authors since I read Cat’s Eye (admittedly
I was thirteen and I don’t think I really grasped the book, but it’s still one
of my favourites to this day) and I’ve already got a hefty collection of her
writing on my bookshelf. I knew I had to have Stone Mattress, so I bought it for myself as a birthday present of
sorts.
As with plenty of books that
I am desperate for, once I buy them, I’m almost too scared to read them. I
worry about books not living up to my expectations of them, I worry about being
disappointed. I worry that once I finish a book, it will have been so good that
I’ll want to read it again for the first time, I worry that I can’t do just
that.
And that’s what I did with Stone Mattress. It sat on my shelf for
months, looking beautiful in all its yellow, hardcover glory. Occasionally, I
would peek at a few of the pages, steal a few lines away and hold them in my
heart. Then, carefully, I would return the book to the shelf for another three
weeks.
When, at the beginning of
2016, I decided that I was going to devote the majority of my reading space for
the year to women, I realised it was a perfect time to read Stone Mattress. It had a coveted spot on
my shelf, next to Anne Carson’s awe-inspiring Antigonick (more to come in a later post!) and a beautifully
illustrated copy of Wuthering Heights,
and 2016 was the year I would tackle all three.
Stone Mattress, rather than
being a collection of stories, is a collection of tales. It encompasses horror,
crime, and fantasy, with each story carefully composed to ensure that they
don’t become fantastical – instead, they are intriguing, will suck you in and
immerse you entirely within their world. No matter how bizarre the subject
matter may be (one story, , deals with vampires) Atwood writes it in an
entirely plausible manner.
As a collection, the running
theme throughout for me was aging. This is a book that deals with how different
people age, the different things they deal with, how their life has led to the
point that they are at. Most of the characters are older (50+ years) and the
book is very introspective in that each of the characters is really trying to
figure out how their life got to that point. There are characters who fear it,
those who embrace it, and those who are just getting by. A topic that is
normally dealt with in a rather melodramatic fashion is instead handled in a
way that is mature and rational, whilst still incorporating all of the best parts
of genre fiction and Atwood’s elegant, refined writing style.
My favourite stories in the
collection are The Freeze-Dried Groom
and Torching the Dusties, the latter
of which deals with the uprising of a disgruntled younger generation seeking
revenge on an older generation in the collection’s final story. Torching the Dusties takes what many Gen
Y-ers might think in their private thoughts to the extreme – for the angry
uprisers, the older generations are a drain on limited resources, and action
must be swift and merciless. As horrific as this might sound, in a world that frequently
seems darker and darker, Atwood’s story comes off as a remarkably plausible
dystopic piece about the generational divide.
This collection is a triumph. Once I started reading it, I could hardly put it down, and made it through the collection in two days. I was stealing reading time in between work, staying up late and waking up early just so I had extra time to read. I finished Torching the Dusties at two o’clock in the morning, listening as a storm rolled in, and stayed up long after that just pondering Stone Mattress as a whole. I know that this is a collection I am going to be reaching for again and again, just to reread a few passages from my favourite stories, to reminisce, to find inspiration, or just to get a dose of Atwood’s addictive writing style.
This collection is a triumph. Once I started reading it, I could hardly put it down, and made it through the collection in two days. I was stealing reading time in between work, staying up late and waking up early just so I had extra time to read. I finished Torching the Dusties at two o’clock in the morning, listening as a storm rolled in, and stayed up long after that just pondering Stone Mattress as a whole. I know that this is a collection I am going to be reaching for again and again, just to reread a few passages from my favourite stories, to reminisce, to find inspiration, or just to get a dose of Atwood’s addictive writing style.
2 comments
I read Cat's Eye for the first time this year, at 35, and it blew me away. You should re-read and see what else you discover :) (Doing a Read Women thing this year, as well!)
ReplyDeleteI'm really keen to give it a re-read - I've no doubt I'll fall even more in love with it. And yes! Reading more women has been one of the highlights of my year! Keep at it!
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