Moral Disorder and Other Stories (2008)

This book has been sitting on my TBR file for awhile, and I decided it was time to read it. It's not my first Margaret Atwood book, but the first I've read that portrays her minimalist writing skills. The book is a series of "snapshots in time", or vignettes that trace a life. The book opens with the heroine, Nell and her husband Tig later on in their lives. Then it switches to Nell at eleven years old. Then proceeds with eight more vignettes of her life progressing from that age to about 45 years old.By that time Nell and Tig have lived a full life with all its stumbles, missteps and, in fact some positive happenings, but truthfully the vignettes depict the tough times much more than the happy ones. The book is not a happy and joyful read, but it says so much in so few well-chosen and well-crafted words and sentences. The last two vignettes are two separate depictions of end-of-life experiences. These stories are so well-illustrated that I had to stop for awhile between them to reflect and get back my equilibrium. At my age, death and dying are a fact of life, but I must admit that I don't dwell on those or on the inevitable consequences. Atwood made me examine these topics, make an assessment and then assimilate what she says so that it makes sense to me. She is a very talented writer, and her books are a journey more than just enjoyable fiction. Glad I took the time. I have one more of her books that has been sitting for ever on my shelf - The Robber Bride, and I want to dip into that pretty quickly. ( )

Not the most compelling Atwood—maybe because these interrelated short stories seemed to offer the worst of both worlds: an expectation for the plot development of a novel that short stories can't deliver on, but some "carry-over" from one story to the next that seemed to detract from the impact of each story on its own. Nevertheless, even mediocre Atwood is better than most other authors at their best. ( )

Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood (2006) ( )

I loved this book. Margaret Atwood’s prose is very poetic. The stories work as a mural or picture book of the main character’s life, from childhood until middle age, following a refined plot line. This is Margaret Atwood at her best. ( )

Really lovely, original book with many inter-related stories building into a wonderful character collage back and forward in time of the protagonist and her family. Laugh out loud funny in some places, wry and quirky in others. No one, absolutely no one, writes like Margaret Atwood. ( )