A review by ravenbait
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood

5.0

I picked this book up in the train station at Waverley on my way to a conference last November, because it had a crow on the cover and, well, because Atwood. I didn't get around to reading it for a while, and when I did I knew instantly it is a book to which I am bound to return in the near future to savour the stories all over again. It is utterly delightful. The characters are memorable, the humour sharp, wry, and ascerbic; the dark threads of horror understated and all the more effective for it. It's humbling to see how good short stories about quirky people can be.

The thread tying the collection together is advancing years, and in the vast sea of work about young, beautiful, shiny, able-bodied people, here is a wonderful set of characters I could actually imagine meeting and even (not all of them) spending time with.

Recommended.