Moral Disorder and Other Stories [Paperback]

Margaret Atwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 2008

Margaret Atwood’s latest brilliant collection of short stories follows the life of a single character, seen as a girl growing up the 1930s, a young woman in the 50s and 60s, and, in the present day, half of a couple, no longer young, reflecting on the new state of the world. Each story focuses on the ways relationships transform a character’s life: a woman’s complex love for a married man, the grief upon the death of parents and the joy with the birth of children, the realization of what growing old with someone you love really means. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood’s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Denaker's fine, deep voice and varied vocal range works particularly well with Atwood's sardonic humor. But her articulation is so perfect as to be disconcerting, often tossing impediments into Atwood's carefully wrought sentences. The first story begins with an elderly married couple, Tig and Nell, having breakfast and tea while discussing some horrific political murders occurring far away. This is the framework for the family stories to come. Nell's girlhood is dedicated to the tender care and feeding of her difficult sister. She perpetually struggles with the pleasure and resentment of her lifelong role as caregiver to her sister, Tig, his sons, his ex-wife and, finally, her own parents. Her life-like Atwood's book-is "a sock drawer into which a number of disparate things were shoved, a jumble." Apparently personal, perhaps even autobiographical, these stories are knit together by the "moral disorder" Atwood sees in everyone from one generation to the next.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Margaret Atwood has expressed her social vision, played with narrative form, and written about enigmatic women, sexism, and family in more than 40 books, including the acclaimed The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye, and The Blind Assassin. Her newest collection contains the same dazzling intellect, writing, and suspense as her previous fiction, but critics call this semiautobiographical effort more compassionate, rich, and emotionally resonant. The stories embedded in this novel of sorts, far from being randomly ordered, speak to each other and Nell's personal growth as she becomes caretaker to her sister, husband, and parents. The only problem? "The stories are so compelling," admits the Rocky Mountain News, "that they leave us wishing for a fuller, more novelistic treatment."

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; First edition (February 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385721641
• ISBN-13: 978-0385721646
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #69,403 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

MARGARET ATWOOD, whose work has been published in over thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid's Tale, her novels include Cat's Eye, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; and her most recent, Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize. She lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Readers Heaven, January 3, 2007

By 

G. E. Melone "lit lover" (Katoomba, New South Wales Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Moral Disorder: and Other Stories (Hardcover)

Margaret Attwood has to be the most brilliant writer of our time. Her descriptive brilliance penetrates deep into your soul as her words take wing. Her latest work, Moral Disorder, continues the high standard of her other works such as Cat's Eye, Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake. No matter what genre she dips into, the results are astounding.

This book of short stories, are all connected through the lives of the women of one family. They could be read separately, but together each story adds to the family portrait giving the reader a panoramic view of the three central characters of the book- mother and two daughters.

The way Margaret Attwood describes a daughter trying to get through to her aging mother, lost in reverie or some other country in her mind, makes you want to weep. Her prose is exquisite.

I have never ever never been disappointed with a Margaret Attwood piece and this one is no exception.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poignant, tantalizing, and slightly mysterious collection of short stories, October 27, 2006

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moral Disorder: and Other Stories (Hardcover)

A good friend of mine is also an incurable Margaret Atwood "fan" and has reminded me yet again of our shared benign affliction, craving assurance that she still has first dibs on MORAL DISORDER the moment I've soaked up the last word of the last paragraph of the last story. "Buy it yourself," I chide her over tea. "We have to support Canadian authors."

"But it's Margaret who supports us!" she exclaims in mock surprise at my naiveté. And once again we marvel at how succinctly, elegantly and inexhaustibly Atwood keeps on revealing "our" ordinary little stories, bares (and bears) "our" secret little griefs and anxieties, and gives wry sincerity to "our" hopes and aspirations, no matter how tangled and threadbare they may seem.

"Our," of course, refers to the collective and peculiar cultural condition known as being Canadian. It matters not one iota to our national great lady of fiction (both short and long) that most of her readers live well south of the fabled 49th Parallel and that we are no more The Great White North than Wal-Mart. For Atwood, mere geography is simultaneously nothing and everything; in her tales, the terrain of the human heart and its myriad tributaries of experience and feeling are the truly renewable natural resources. Or, as my hungry-to-borrow friend puts it, Margaret Atwood can turn a tired and mundane junk-mail idea --- sibling rivalry, common-law couples, hobby farming, teenage angst --- into soul-stirring literature. Amen to that!

And she does it wholly up to form in MORAL DISORDER, whose rather weighty and officious title is just another of those playful authorial devices that belie this collection's true generosity of spirit. Musing on a rainy afternoon, the friend and I decide over our second cup of tea that the book's chosen title could have mimicked any of the 11 lightly connected tales between its covers. How about "The Entities," "White Horse," "The Other Place," "The Labrador Fiasco," or (my personal favorite) "The Art of Cooking and Serving"?

Each title presents itself as tantalizing, slightly mysterious, and ready to give you more than expected, while still keeping back a few secrets of its own. And that strikes me as being quintessentially Atwood. At each turn in the fictional trail she scratches down through an artfully assembled patchwork of characters, relationships and events to show the persistence and poignancy of truth just below the surface.

MORAL DISORDER is good for a week of rainy afternoons, and more. Although we Canadians are known for being generous, my advice is: Don't be too quick to loan this latest Atwood gem out. It's truly a "keeper."

--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch [..]

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Tour into the Past, October 28, 2006

By 

DCSusan (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moral Disorder: and Other Stories (Hardcover)

I bought this book a week ago and finished it yesterday. I wanted to savor each of the stories and not rush through through the book. As a contemporary of Atwood's, I could relate to the periods and relationships she so brilliantly describes. The final story, "The Boys at the Lab," I was able to read on two levels--the description of the decline of the narrator's 90+ mother and recollection (only by photos in an album) of a magical period of her childhood.