In an afterword, Margaret Atwood claims that her book Stone Mattress isn't meant to be a collection of stories but of tales: Calling a piece of short fiction a “tale” removes it at least slightly from the realm of mundane works and days, as it evokes the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago teller of tales. And this is certainly the effect that Atwood achieves with this collection: with murder, mayhem, and misadventure; examples of genre fiction, and even more interestingly, an examination of genre authors; and a persistent presence of the greatest horror facing us all – that of growing old – Atwood has assembled nine tales that, while shining a light on our mundane world, don't quite reside within it. As the geologist who explains the titular stone mattress formations of the far north concludes, it's all quite fascinating.
The first three stories are linked: In Alphinland, the recently widowed Constance must negotiate an ice storm – with the disembodied advice of her dead husband – and along the way, she reminisces about the fantasy series she had written over the years. Initially begun to pay the rent for her and her serious-poet-boyfriend Gavin, the faerie and dragon world that Constance created was always considered vaguely embarrassing, even by her eventual husband Ewan; despite ultimate critical acclaim and a decent income. In Revenant, we get a glimpse of the aging Gavin: managed by his much younger third wife and horrified to discover that a grad student who wants to interview him is only interested in his poetry as it relates to Constance's work. In Dark Lady, we visit with Marjorie – the “other woman” who broke up Constance and Gavin – and see how she and her twin brother are living out their senior years. These three stories are very strong and touch on interesting themes such as art and aging and memory and loss.
In a similar later story – The Dead Hand Loves You – an author remembers his own impoverished early adulthood and the circumstances that led to him writing the “International Horror Classic” that would eventually anchor him down in more ways than one. Like with Constance's fantasy writings, it was interesting to see the evolving attitudes towards genre fiction and its authors (imagine a panel at a convention with a Freudian and a Jungian nearly coming to blows over hidden symbolism), and as these are repeating themes, I imagine they are of interest to the sometimes sci-fi writer Atwood herself.
Although some murderous thoughts are present in the above stories, they come front and center in The Freeze-Dried Groom and Stone Mattress – the latter tale dreamed up while Atwood and her husband were on a Northern Expedition, for the amusement of the passengers. In a way, this alternate writing method makes for a different kind of story, but for what it says about evolving attitudes towards women and their sexuality, its main character, Verna, would have had much to talk about with Constance and Marjorie.
Two more stories stand out as not quite belonging here, and it wasn't too surprising to learn in the afterword that they were commissioned as writing challenges by McSweeney's and The Walrus. In one – Lusas Naturae – an unnamed birth defect causes a little girl to be considered a monster (a tale complete with torches and pitchforks that put me in mind of Robertson Davies' Cornish Trilogy), and in the other – I Dream of Zenia With the Bright Red Teeth – we revisit the characters from The Robber Bride as they negotiate their own senior years. It's funny, but just as I was thinking to myself, “It's refreshing that Atwood didn't put any of her angry politics in this collection”, there's Charis and her activist rants.
My absolute favourite story here is the last one: Torching the Dusties. While most of these tales concentrate on aging characters, the final one is set in a retirement home and introduces us to people who are attempting to retain their dignity even as their bodies begin to fail:
Like herself, he must be worried about how he smells: that acid, stale odour of aging bodies so noticeable when all the Ambrosiads are assembled in the dining room, their base note of slow decay and involuntary leakage papered over with applied layers of scent – delicate florals on the women, bracing spices on the men, the blooming rose or brusque pirate image inside each of them still fondly cherished.When a worldwide movement – Our Turn – shows up at the gates of the building with placards and baby-faced masks, threatening to kill off the old folks to make room for the new, Atwood writes with black humour and intelligence – all the while underscoring the residents' humanity and worth. This tale makes a perfect bookend with Constance's initial story: each has a widow suffering flights of fancy who needs to negotiate danger with only a phone call from a distant child for support.
In addition to the big and engaging themes in this collection, there were so many nice little writing moments. I really liked this observation: The traffic is putrid. What is it about winter that causes people to drive as if their hands are feet? And in the same passage, I loved that Atwood included objects that only a Canadian would understand – gets himself a Timmy's double-double – or that only a Torontonian would understand – He zigzags down towards the Gardiner, which maybe won't have fallen down yet. Of course Margaret Atwood doesn't need explain herself. And in another tale, this read as a perfect description:
As for her mother, she'd been a strict Presbyterian with a mouth like a vise grip, who despised poetry and was unlikely to have been influenced by anything softer than a granite wall.I wouldn't exactly call myself an Atwood fan, but I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. Maybe she has mellowed, maybe I have mellowed, but either way, there's no denying that Margaret Atwood is still an important and inventive voice.
