Fiction Short Stories (single Author)
Bluebeard's Egg
- Publisher
- McClelland & Stewart
- Initial publish date
- Sep 1999
- Category
- Short Stories (single author), Contemporary Women, Literary
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780770428198
- Publish Date
- May 1999
- List Price
- $10.99
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780771008627
- Publish Date
- Sep 1999
- List Price
- $22.00
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
In this acclaimed collection of twelve stories, Margaret Atwood probes the territory of childhood memories and the casual cruelty men and women inflict upon each other and themselves. She looks behind the familiar world of family summers at remote lakes, ordinary lives, and unexpected loves, and she unearths profound truths. A melancholy, teenage love is swept away by a Canadian hurricane, while a tired, middle-aged affection is rekindled by the spectacle of rare Jamaican birds; a potter tries to come to terms with the group of poets who so smother her that she is driven into the arms of her accountant; and, in the title story, the Bluebeard legend is retold as an ironic tale of marital deception. Stark and scathing at times, humorous and compassionate at others, Bluebeard’s Egg confirms once again Atwood’s reputation as the pre-eminent chronicler of our times.
About the author
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than fifty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, part of the Massey Lecture series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
Editorial Reviews
“Atwood displays polished craftsmanship and rare insight in the stories in this collection. They are the work of an author in full control of her considerable talents.” —Globe and Mail
“An acute and poetic observer of the eternal, universal, rum relationships between men and women.” —The Times (UK)
“Margaret Atwood renders visual, aural, and tactile events in such crisp, surprising language that her images crackle off the page.” —Washington Post
“A book to be read and re-read, to be talked about and savored.” —London Free Press
“Her stories are sophisticated, reticent, ornate, stark, supple, stiff, savage or forgiving; they are exactly what she wants them to be. They are stories from the prime of life.” —Times Literary Supplement
“An outstanding correspondent on the war between the sexes writes as wittily as ever on the hopes and shortcomings of women who bake for poets, sleep with their accountants, attribute their preference for awful men to fearlessness, and don’t know how much they scare their own mothers.” —The Observer
“This collection of short stories shows her genius with all its sparkle and humour.” —Cosmopolitan
“In this impressive collection of astute and reverberating stories, she adds to her already considerable stature as a writer.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“The depth and complexity of Atwood’s critique of contemporary society are stunning.” —Ms.
