Good Bones and Simple Murders

by Margaret Atwood

first edition cover of ISBN 0385471106

In this collection of short works that defy easy categorization, Margaret Atwood displays, in condensed and crystallized form, the trademark wit and viruosity of her best-selling novels, brilliant stories, and insightful poetry. Among the jewels gathered here are Gertrude offering Hamlet a piece of her mind, the real truth about the Little Red Hen, a reincarnated bat explaining how Bram Stoker got "Dracula" all wrong, and the five methods of making a man (such as the "Traditional Method": "Take some dust off the ground. Form. Breathe into the nostrils the breath of life. Simple, but effective!"). There are parables, monologues, prose poems, condensed science fiction, reconfigured fairy tales, and other miniature masterpieces - punctuated with charming illustrations by the author.

Contents:
- Murder in the Dark
- Bad News
- Unpopular Gals
- The Little Red Hen Tells All
- Gertrude Talks Back
- There Was Once
- Women's Novels
- The Boys' Own Annual, 1911
- Stump Hunting
- Making a Man
- Men at Sea
- Simmering
- Happy Endings
- Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women
- The Victory Burlesk
- She
- The Female Body
- Cold-Blooded
- Liking Men
- In Love with Raymond Chandler
- Simple Murders
- Iconography
- Alien Territory
- My Life as a Bat
- Hardball
- Bread
- Poppies: Three Variations
- Homelanding
- The Page
- An Angel
- Third Handed
- Death Scenes
- We Want It All
- Dance of the Lepers
- Good Bones

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Poetry, Canada, Fantasy, Literary Fiction, Literature

164 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1994

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 thirty-five 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 ­ in the Massey 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.

Associations: Margaret Atwood was President of the Writers' Union of Canada from May 1981 to May 1982, and was President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking) from 1984-1986. She and Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International. Ms. Atwood is also a current Vice-President of PEN International.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 3 out of 5]

Margaret Atwood has a knack for casting her intellectual gaze out into the world and reeling in all the unsettling bits floating about in everyday life. She garnishes these in wry humor and fantastical narratives, a skill that has brought a well-earned reputation and makes for some fascinating reads. Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994) is a collection of writings that defy easy compartmentalization—being brief stories, riffs on fairy tales or otherwise general musings that would likely pass in the present under the name creative nonfiction—that make for bite-sized adventures into her charming imagination. While at worst these seem like the draft form of ideas she had little else use for, it is a fun read made more exciting by the sprinkling in of her original sketches to compliment the pieces. You’ll find her predominant themes on display here, particularly her criticisms of gender roles in society, though the ideas come across like those bags of “Fun Sized” candies people give out on Halloween that aren’t quite as fun as the packaging would have you believe. Still, Atwood is heralded as a modern classic for a reason and fans of the author will find much to enjoy here even if some of it does feel a bit dated and understuffed.

I particularly enjoyed the innovation with structure she uses across these stories. Few are very straightforward, often starting with the seed of an idea and quickly blooming into a take on a fairy tale. But we have stories that read like a choose-you-own-adventure, stories that read like a short essay or thought experiment, or stories that just simply explore what the word “bread” makes you think of. It’s all pretty fun. As with Atwood there is a lot of humorous jabs at patriarchy or criticisms on male-dominated literary history—‘there are never any evil stepfathers’ she quips in one—but works like “Womens Novels” which criticizes the gender roles often enforced in novels reads as a bit outdated while still makes good points that highlight inequality and misogyny that is still just as present and horrible. Still, it is classic Atwood and the writing is sharp and witty.

Good Bones and Simple Murders is a fun little collection that makes for quick reading and some good chuckles. The array of ideas and presentations of them is charming and shows off the author's writing abilities that have made her so beloved. This is a lovely little book but definitely leaves you wanting more.

3.5/5

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Margaret Atwood's books, especially Cat's Eye, The Handmaid's Tale, The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace, but this book of short essays and poems, not as much. There are some witty passages and astute messages here about women's life and feminism and I enjoyed the skewed retelling of fairy tales, like "The Little Red Hen Tells All" and "Unpopular Gals" about wicked witches and ugly step sisters. This especially sums up the genre:

"Catch it. Put it in a pumpkin, in a high tower, in a compound, in a chamber, in a house, in a room. Quick, stick a leash on it, a lock, a chain, some pain, settle it down, so it can never get away from you again."

Here is a comic passage from "Cold-Blooded" about an alien moth culture trying to figure out humans, "Picture our nausea and disgust when we discovered that it is the male, not the egg-bearer, which is the most prized among them!"

[Monika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Margaret Atwood. Her witticism is so incongruous that it seems innate. Good Bones and Simple Murders is a compilation of harrowing, liberating and reincarnating tales. It debunks what had been firmly holding grounds for years. It is anecdotal at its best.

I picked up this book to read "Gertrude Talks Back", but one thing led to another and now, I am mesmerised by it. It is sharp. It is witty. It is cleverly and poignantly written. Atwood's illustration is as vibrant and provocative as her writing. She is so subtle that a few (read, MOST OF THEM) tales need to be re-read to even catch hold of what's going on. Now I know that the vampires don't like sucking blood from the neck because they dislike hair, that witches are the story and they can't be separated from it, that it wasn't Claudius, but Gertrude who was directly responsible for the demise of King Hamlet.

"Unpopular Gals", "Happy Endings", "My Life as a Bat" and "We Want It All" are my favorite tales in this collection.

Favourite quote:
"You wonder why I stabbed the blue eyes of my dolls with pins and pulled their hair out until they were bald? Life isn’t fair. Why should I be?"
- "Unpopular Gals"

[Christmas Carol ꧁꧂ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always been a huge fan of Margaret Atwood, but I'm not always a fan of short stories. & when I do read them I prefer to read them one at a time - maybe in a magazine.

But I just jumped into this one and at first I couldn't put it down. All my favourite stories in this collection were at the start. The were sharp witty & clever. But it is the same strong yet enigmatic voice right through, so I did have to keep putting this collection down. So while I loved Murder in the Dark & Gertrude talks back, I didn't love every story. In fact, by the end I was a little bored.

But I still enjoyed renewing my acquaintance with my favourite Canadian author. My next book of hers will be a novel.

[Chris Dietzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of short stories that felt much more experimental in style and approach than most others I've read. Reading most of this felt like the equivalent of listening to a great band as they practice in a garage before going to a studio to record a finished, polished product. Coming from an author I love that was an incredibly neat experience. There were one or two stories that fell flat for me but there were also stories like "Gertrude Talks Back" that I absolutely loved.

[Jenny Maloney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the first story of this book, "Murder in the Dark," and when I was finished I turned to my husband, shoved the book in his hand, told him to read it and then he was to tell me HOW DID SHE DO THAT?

He didn't really have an answer but his comment defined what I thought of the rest of the book: "It's written with the confidence of someone who knows she can hit a homerun every time."

Confidence oozes through every one of these pieces.

Least faves (because they just seemed a little too forced - and I wish I had a better word for that sensation, but that's the best I've got!):

"Gertrude Talks Back": Queen Gertrude gives Hamlet her opinion on her current and former husbands. Fine. But the tone somehow seemed dismissive - and the character of Gertrude never seemed dismissive in the play - which is doubly odd considering the information she is giving her 'priggish' son. And, this may seem an odd critique, but I think the white space between the paragraphs doesn't do the story any favors. It gives it a fragmented feeling and I think that a piece riffing on Shakespeare would work better within the play framework - perhaps shaping the monologue in a block form like Hamlet's own speeches would have allowed the words to have more impact instead of making the reader adjust both the form and the words.

"Poppies: Three Variations": While this is probably the most complex exercise, it reads just like that: an exercise. She riffs on a verse about poppies by John McCrae by using the same words of that verse, in the same order, to tell three different stories. The first words of McCrae's verse is 'in Flanders' and all three mini-stories have with 'in' followed somewhere by 'Flanders' followed somewhere by the next word in the verse. It's a good way to stretch the literary muscle, but it's like watching someone work out - we admire their physique but prefer not to see the huffing and puffing and sweat that go along with it. Just give me the calendar, ya know?

The stories that I absolutely adore are the ones that have a satirical bite to them.

"Simmering": Oh! My FAVORITE by far. (I know, it's unfair to choose favorites, but there you have it, anyway.) It's all about what happens when men take over the kitchen. Go get this book and read that story.

"Murder in the Dark": It set the tone for the rest of the book. Is the author just trying to manipulate the reader throughout (I'm totally okay with the way Atwood manipulates, by the way), is she just a magician showing nothing of reality? Puts the power with the writer...so I think my writerly friends will enjoy this a lot...as well as readers who like to figure out the trick. I still haven't....

"Happy Endings": A choose-your-own adventure marriage!

Atwood also illustrated the collection, and some are as provocative as the stories - which are also dominated by the bits and pieces of male and female anatomy. Interwoven among the stories is the question of objectifying the body: "Making a Man," "Alien Territory," "Dance of the Lepers," and "Good Bones" hit on the question in a more direct way...but it's everywhere.

Well worth reading - and it won't take that long either.

~Jenny
Place for the Stolen
Underground Writing Project

[Rauf · Rating 4 out of 5]

23 Things that yours truly learned from reading Good Bones And Simple Moiduh:

1. In the game of mystery, the murderer is the writer. The detective is the reader. And the victim is the book.
2. But sometimes, the murderer is (still) the writer. The detective is the critic. The victim is the reader.
3. Your depression, my friend, is the revenge of oranges.
4. It wasn't Claudius who killed the King of Denmark. 'Twas Gertrude!
5. Repression breeds sublimation.

6. When you're having sex with Raymond Chandler caressing the furnitures is considered foreplay.
7. Stupid women who will fall for a stupid trick that can't fool a gerbil give us Literature.
8. Vampire bats won't suck blood from your neck because bats hate hair and neck is too close to your hair.
9. The Angel of Suicide is faceless, like a grey egg.
10. The Earth is an eighteenth-century ship with stowaways but without destination.

11. Men are made out of dusts. Women, out of ribs.
12. A man is chained to unpredictability therefore he's prone to sadness.
13. Say 'Pass the sugar' and hear the guns.
14. We never know the line between Love and Greed.
15. The color red is compelling to a nation of metamorphs.

16. If stock market exists, so does previous lives.
17. Male brains are objective. That's why they think they're orphans, cast adrift.
18. Men's novels are about getting power. Women's novels are about getting men...so they can get power.
19. You can't get the witch out of the story because SHE IS the story.
20. The phrase "a glimpse of pink through the gloom" only has one meaning.

21. Everything you've ever wanted I want it also.
22. No Devil, no Fall, no Redemption. That's grade two arithmetic.
23. No news is good news and everyone knows that.

When I first got this book, I noticed that the stories were short so I thought: flash fiction.
And when I think of flash fiction, I think of O.Henry ....and The Flash.
This book also made me think of Monday or Tuesday: Eight Stories by Virginia Woolf . I read that a couple of months ago and that one was done entirely in stream of consciousness. I didn't like it one bit. I hated it.

With Good Bones..., Atwood didn't sit down and write conventional fiction. Most of the pieces presented in this collection were her random thoughts, half-finished first drafts, snatches of her imagination. Sometimes the sentences can be stream of consciousness-like but I still love them.
Can't imagine people would want to read this unless he/she is a fan of Atwood.
BTW, most of those 23 items I listed above were sentences that Atwood wrote.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Watch a brilliant imagination at work.

Margaret Atwood creates men in her kitchen, convinces us she was a bat in a former life, makes lepers dance. There’s some weird stuff in here. It’s seriously playful, and playfully serious.

“Put yourself in a different room,” she says in the story Bread. “That’s what the mind is for.”

[Jamilla Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book of short stories is brief, it is very dense and is not a quick read. In fact, most (if not all) of the stories beg for a re-read in order to catch Atwood’s subtleties. As a whole, the pieces have a strong feminist theme threaded throughout, with a gifted writer’s sense of humor in the crafting of the written word. Economically sound and imaginative, there’s a story in here for everyone, although everyone may not like all of the stories. There were quite a few individual stories that I absolutely fell in love with, like “Happy Endings”, “Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women”, “In Love With Raymond Chandler”, “Simple Murders”, and the two listed below.

“Unpopular Gals” was the first that I adored in that she interprets the female villain characters, archetypal icons in various pieces of literature, using first person point of view to tell their opinions of how they have been characterized. In one, the archetypal “evil stepmother” pronounces,
“The thing about those good daughters is, they’re so good. Obedient and passive. Sniveling, I might add. No get-up-and-go. What would become of them if it weren’t for me? Nothing, that’s what . . . I stir things up, I get things moving . . . You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can’t get me out of the story. I’m the plot, babe, and don’t ever forget it.” (11)

The other that I really liked was “Gertrude Talks Back” where Atwood gives Hamlet’s mother a voice, using a mixture of first and second person point of view, re imagining a more powerful and decisive Queen of Denmark who is frustrated with her unaffectionate husband and chooses to rectify the situation herself. In her one-sided dialogue (we only imagine the lines that Hamlet is saying, from Gertrude’s responses) she states, “Oh! You think what? You think Claudius murdered your Dad? Well, no wonder you’ve been so rude to him at the dinner table! If I’d known that, I could have put you straight in no time flat. It wasn’t Claudius, darling. It was me.”

These two stories remind me of her Penelopiad, where she tells Penelope’s side of the events which occurred after Odysseus left Ithaca to fight in the Trojan War, while she was left alone for the 10 years of the war’s duration and the 10 additional years it took her husband to return. The other stories are interesting, extremely well-crafted and delightfully experimental.

One, “Poppies: three Variations” is a collection of three short stories which use the words of John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” poem in order, (surrounded by other words of course) to tell three distinct tales. It’s hard to describe, but very cool.


Favorite/Memorable Quotes:

“. . . stupid women are not so stupid as they pretend: they pretend for love. Men love them because they make even stupid men feel smart: women for the same reason, and because they are reminded of all the stupid things they have done themselves, but mostly because without them there would be no stories . . . Let us now praise stupid women, who have given us Literature.”
“An affair with Raymond Chandler, what a joy! Not because of the mangled bodies and the marinated cops and hints of eccentric sex, but because of his interest in furniture.”
"Only after we had sniffed, fingered, rubbed, rolled on, and absorbed the furniture of the room would we fall into each other’s arms, and onto the bed (king-size? peach-colored? creaky? narrow? four-postered? pioneer-quilted? lime-green chenille-covered?), ready at last to do the same things to each other.”
“Whether he’s making her like it or making her dislike it or making her pretend to like it is important, but it’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is making her. Over, from nothing, new. From scratch, the way he wants.”
“What men are most afraid of is not lions, not snakes, not the dark, not women. Not any more. What men are most afraid of is the body of another man. Men’s bodies are the most dangerous thing on earth.”
“In the gap between desire and enactment, noun and verb, intention and infliction, want, and have, compassion begins.”

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve just recently (finally) read Atwood’s Stone Mattress for the first time and realized how much I love her writing, so naturally now I want to check out more of it. This collection is very different from Stone Mattress, wherein the first featured more traditional narratives and linear plots, this is all play and whimsy, albeit with a very serious feminist angle to it. These stories are snippets, clever things, original takes of well known works from different women’s perspectives, worldplays, creative, quirky and singular creations of a very talented mind. There are even appropriately whimsical quirky drawings throughout. The way these tales are written…it’s practically poems in prosaic form and, while I’m not particularly enamored with most poetry, these worked very well, particularly for the page count. Which is to say it might have gotten tiresome after a while, but at 160some pages it doesn’t get a chance too and stays fresh and fun. So far reading Atwood, two very different reading experiences, apples and oranges, really, but it showcases the breadth of her talent, the striking command of language and presents a lovely variety. Stone Mattress was more my speed, pedestrian as it may be, I do prefer more conventional narratives that tell actual stories, but this was enjoyable in its own right. And such a quick read. Not for everyone, certainly, but for the right audience in the right mood this is a singularly interesting enjoyable collection.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I re-read these short stories, many of which would now be called flash fiction, and although they are not my favorite of her work, I did appreciate the frequent sarcasm and at times humorous commentary from the feminist perspective. A quick read.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was dark, twisted, and magnificent. It gently caressed the darkest parts of me.

Yet, in this strange place there was great humor and wit.

I appreciate the chance to laughingly embrace the unacceptable.

[capture stories · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good Bones and Simple Murders is a witty, naughty, and mischievous compilation of short stories ranging from absurd poetry and flash anomaly of classics fictions.

It was a daring rewrite of the classics for Gertrude and Hamlet based on personal observation. There's also the story of Little Red Hen, which was portrayed in a whole new style of prose. Not missing out on the thought-provoking narration of bat with bombs, wars, and the challenge imposed on the erroneous of Dracula parable. The gingerbread man's wonky retold about the proper "Making of a Man," which is so different from the classic origin as well. In this miniatures collection of stories, Atwood is a chef of extraordinaire, who has whip up fantastic stories, regardless of the roots, and the traditions, creating for her readers a whole new world of literature~the Atwood magical world of literature! Most of the stories are abstract and conceptual. It took me reading through a third way of the book to catch on to her unique and brilliant mind. I have to say, some descriptions make me laugh, some make me ponder, and some make me question.

I have enjoyed this book with the comical and rare illustrations. It's a treasure hunt for sure, where readers will have to read and follow carefully to the writer's mind for clues to the hidden treasure.

If you would be intrigued by an unconstrained and eccentric storyline, check one this out.

[Jennifer Kepesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each of the pieces in this book is only a few pages long. It is genre-defying; herein are included: An experiment with digging into a well-known poem by interspersing its words within a story; meta-fiction, half play, half instruction; whimsy such as one might wish for in a conversation at a dinner table, Atwood perhaps on the second swallow of her second glass of wine, everyone in playful one-upsmanship and appreciative laughter; deadly seriousness about misogyny wrapped in seeming narrative, a honeyed tongue with the bite of truth underneath, “no offense, but....”—some pieces feel like writing practice, like feather-tickles of trying out a direction, just playing around, sowing seeds, some to yield a bounty later. Each, and as a whole, they are inspiration for writing. There is enough to mine, even though they are just bibelots.

[jessica young]

“But why do women like them? Not like, I mean to say, adore. (Remember, that despite everything, despite all I have told you, the rusted cars, the greasy wardrobes, the lack of breakfasts, the hopelessness, remain the same). Because if they can say their own bodies, they could say yours also. Because they could say skin as if it meant something, not only to them but to you. Because one night, when the snow is falling and the moon is blotted out, they could put their empty hands, their hands filled with poverty, their beggar’s hands, on your body, and bless it, and tell you it is made of light.”

I love when Margaret Atwood says something so earth-shattering that I am forced to sit in silence and rethink every interaction I have ever had with a man

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

for some reason this appeared without a rating. All I can remember is that although there were a few stories I did warm to, in general a thought-provoking collection.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Atwood has always been problematic for me. I'm not sure I've ever finished one of her novels. This one, a collection of various shorts, some SF/F, was recommended by a couple of GR friends. Well, "tastes differ." I didn't care for the story my friend particularly liked. Even of the stories I finished, none even reached the 3 stars = good level. So: I read or tried perhaps half of the stories. One was OK, the rest not. Rating: 1.5 stars, rounded down for wasting my time. Even though I didn't lose that much, it's still gone forever, and I don't have that much left to waste!

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection features a lot of very short stories, generally under five pages, that can be read in mere minutes. In this way, the collection almost reminded me of jokes, with a quick set up of the scene and ending with Atwood's insightful, often acerbic, wit. It is a very quick read and great for any fan of her other works.

Also, "Happy Endings" was used as a short story for a book club on 9/12/2017, and it is interesting how a short work like this can lead to a wide-ranging discussion.

[Mira123 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dieses Buch habe ich wieder für die Uni gelesen. Ja, das sind ganz schön viele, ich weiß. Die Liste ist insgesamt drei Seiten lang. Schriftgröße 12, natürlich. Ist genauso spaßig, wie es sich anhört. Dieses Buch hier habe ich mir selbst ausgesucht. Wir mussten nämlich eine Kurzgeschichte lesen und da hab ich mich für "Gertrude Talks Back" entschieden. Die ist hier in diesem Band und eh nur so um die drei oder vier Seiten lang. Ich fand die Geschichte absolut großartig, deswegen hab ich dann doch das gesamte Buch gelesen und dafür auch nur eine Busfahrt lang gebraucht.

Worum es in diesem Buch geht? Das lässt sich recht einfach erklären. Atwood schnappt sich hier all die weiblichen Figuren aus klassischen Werken und Märchen und lässt sie mal erzählen, wie das eigentlich abgelaufen ist. Gertrude ist zum Beispiel die Mutter von Hamlet, die ja den Bruder ihres Mannes geheiratet hat, nachdem dieser ermordet wurde. Was sie dazu zu sagen hat, dass Hamlet sich an seinem Onkel für den Mord rächen will? Das könnt ihr hier nachlesen. Oder was ist mit der bösen Stiefmutter von Aschenputtel? Oder der bösen Hexe von Rapunzel? Warum verhalten sie sich so, wie wir es in jedem Märchenbuch nachlesen können? Und entsprechen diese Geschichten überhaupt der Wahrheit? In diesem Buch könnt ihr es herausfinden und das fand ich mega spannend. Atwood dreht einfach mal jede Geschichte um: Die Guten sind plötzlich böse und die Bösen gar nicht mehr so verachtenswert. Und das wirkt nicht irgendwie erzwungen, so wie das bei solchen Experimenten schnell mal passieren kann, sondern total natürlich und ich hatte am Ende des Buches sogar ein schlechtes Gewissen gegenüber den ganzen Figuren, die ich als Kind natürlich immer gehasst habe. Und meine Heldinnen, die ich damals hatte? Die ganzen Prinzessinnen und gequälten Mädchen? Nun, plötzlich waren mir die gar nicht mehr so sympathisch.
Aber es ging auch um andere Themen und nicht alle der Texte waren Prosa. Es gab auch Gedichte, eine Gebrauchsanleitung, wie man einen Mann erschaffen kann und sogar ein bisschen Science-Fiction war dabei. Okay, letzteres kommt nicht besonders überraschend - immerhin ist das Atwood!

Ich war richtig enttäuscht, als ich das Buch dann durch hatte. Meiner Meinung nach hätten da gerne noch hundert Seiten mehr sein dürfen. Klar war für mich auf jeden Fall, dass ich mir auf jeden Fall früher oder später eine eigene Ausgabe von diesem Buch leisten werde - ich hab nämlich ausgerechnet dieses Buch von der Bücherei ausgeliehen! Dabei gab es da so viele tolle Abschnitte, die am liebsten sofort markiert hätte...

Mein Fazit? Ich liebe es! Dieser Klassiker hat mich zu hundert Prozent begeistert und von sich überzeugt!

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

First time reading a collection of short stories and it didn’t disappoint 😁

Some of my fav were:
“There was once”
“Stump hunting”
“Happy endings”
“The female body”
“In love with Raymond Chandler”
“Bread”

I couldn’t pick just one 🤭

I also haven’t started and finished a book in one day in ages so that was fun

[Eline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Margaret and I should be besties

[charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Atwood's books tend to really be hits or misses for me. This collection was more of a hit than a miss, and a thematically sound. Good Bones and Simple Murders is a phenomenal title and encapsulates the spirit of the stories. But for every story I really enjoyed, there was a story that exemplified what often frustrates me about Atwood's work.

My favorites were "Stump Hunting," "Making a Man," and "Poppies: Three Variations." "Stump Hunting" and "Making a Man" are both how-to guides. "Stump Hunting" is eerie and fun, and "Making a Man" is tongue-in-cheek and incisive. "Poppies" is an expansion on the John McCrae poem of the same name, and it is both beautiful and haunting.

My least favorite stories were, to my surprise, those that Atwood wrote from the perspective of women who are barely given voices in famous works. "Unpopular Gals" is told by various "evil" fairytale women: Cinderella's stepsister, the witch in Rapunzel, the stepmother in any number of fairytales. "Gertrude Talks Back" is a Hamlet refutation. As apt as both of these works are about the unfair treatment of women in literature, I didn't feel they suggested anything new or interesting about patriarchy. Additionally, the women she writes are dismissive and condescending of other women. Case in point: Gertrude tells Hamlet, "A real girlfriend would do you a heap of good. Not like that pasty-faced what's-her-name, all trussed up like a prize turkey in those touch-me-not corset of hers." There's something intensely depressing about a "woke" Gertrude belittling Ophelia.

This collection was first released in 1983, over thirty years ago. Maybe back then it was revolutionary to just say "men suck, the patriarchy sucks" and leave it at that, but these days it's not subversive and when poorly executed reads as prescribing certain kinds of femininity. That said, Atwood's writing is always very technically impressive, and I learn something about writing every time I read her work.

[Sam (Hissing Potatoes) · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. Occasional nice imagery and turns of phrase, but to no discernible purpose. Some of the stories dipped into already existing folktales/stories in an attempt to highlight a specific character or uncommon angle, but they were always too short for me to derive any meaning. Most of them felt like writing exercises meant to inspire new ideas or allow the author to practice but weren't strong enough for publication. The two exceptions were Simmering (great satire) and The Victory Burlesk (well demonstrated point).

[KWinks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as a part of #MARM, I took my time with this one as I found if I read too many of these short little...essays? tidbits? thoughts? they blended together and were not as impactful. Some of them I really enjoyed, others were very vague or abstract and I felt they were maybe over my head? Happy Endings was by far my favorite. I find I'm not a huge fan of flash fiction, by the time I get invested in something as a reader-it's over.
Still, it's very, very clever.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was like a peek into Atwood riffing on ideas, plots, themes. It was like she was auditioning them, seeing what she could do with them, exercising them, putting them through their paces, marking them off with a stopwatch -- go! Wonderful.

[Alexa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gets all the stars.

[K M · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[ellia · Rating 5 out of 5]

i will never get sick of women writing about women

[The Lady Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed these very short stories, though the book physically was a mess. The printing was off kilter so a lot of the pages had letters cut off. Oh well. Some of these stories took my breath, others were just meh.

p.15 The I'll do it myself, I said, as the nun quipped to the vibrator. Nobody was listening, of course. They'd all gone to the beach. (What???? Lol this made me ask WTF)

p.16-17** They said it was my fault, for having a loaf of bread when they had none. ... Here, I said. I apologize for having the idea in the first place. I apologize for luck. I apologize for self-denial. I apologize for being a good cook. I apologize for that crack about nune. I apologize for that crack about roosters. I apologize for smiling, in my smug hen apron, with my smug hen beak. I apologize for being a hen. Have some more. Have mine.

p.22 - "There Was Once"

p.30 If there must be deaths, let there be resurrections, or at least a Heaven so we know where we are.

p.65 They don't live in the real world, we tell ourselves fondly: but what kind of criticism is that? If they can manage not to live in it, good for them. We would rather not live in it either, ourselves.

p.66 They are far too clever, not for their own good but for ours.

p.67 She talks with wolves, without knowing what sort of beasts they are: Where have you been all my life? they ask. Where HAVE I been all my life? she replies.

p.70: We forgive you! we cry. We understand! Now do it some more!

p.83 The right brain doesn't know what the left brain is doing. Good for aiming though, for hitting the target when you pull the trigger. What's the target? Who cares? What matters is hitting it.

p.83 This is why men are so sad, why they feel so cut off, why they think of themselves as orphans cast adrift ... not just alone but Alone, lost in the dark, lost in the skull, searching for the other half.

p.98-99 It was because of the chocolate bars. It was because of the stars. It was because of a life behind bars. It was her hormones. It was the radioation from the wires and phones. It was his mother saying You'll never amount to a hill of beans. It was because he was so all-fired mean. It was the sleeping pills. It was the frills, on the blouse, under the jacket, over the breasts. It was the blood tests. It was the sigh, the cry, the hand on the thigh. It was the hunger, it waas the rate, it was the spirit of the age. It was a coincidence. It was the wrong bottle. My hand slipped. How was I to know it was loaded?

p.123: If the bats had been used after all, would there have been a war memorial to them? It isn't likely.
If you ask a human being what makes his flesh creep more, a bat or a bomb, he will say the bat. It is difficult to experience loathing for something merely metal, however ominous. We save these sensations for those with skin and flesh: a skin, a flesh, unlike our own.

p.123: Perhaps it isn't my life as a bat that was the interlude. Perhaps it is this life. Perhaps I have been sent into human form as if on a dangerous mission, to save and redeem my own folk. When I have gained a small success, or died in the attempt - for failure, in such a task and against such odds, is more likely - I will be born again, back into that other form, that other world where I truly belong.

p.134: In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row.
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below - John McCrae

p.141: "Homelanding"

p.150: ...the page closes over their heads without a sound, with a seam, and is immediately as whole and empty, as glassy, as enticing as before.

p.161: I know I look like hell. But it's still me in here.

p.175: Today I speak to my bones as I would speak to a dog. I want to go up the sttairs, I tell them. ...Good bones, GOOD bones, I coax, wondering how to reward them; if they will sit up for me, beg, roll over, do one more trick, once more.
There. We're at the top. GOOD bones! Good BONES! Keep on going.

[DonutKnow · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning chapters definitely seemed to be in defense of the villains in fairy tales such as Cinderella's evil stepmother. It was quite riveting and easy to follow.

However, towards the middle and end the tone changed to something more serious. There were more scathing comments about the way society views relationships and gender roles. It was quite interesting, but not what I was expecting when I first downloaded the e-audiobook.

I guess it would have been easier to follow if I was reading it. Nevertheless, there were some bites of insight about human relationships and human existence that made me ponder about the topic on the commute home (unfortunately a lot of it was lost on me as fatigue settled in on the train).

The descriptions in the last few chapters kind of stopped making sense to me, as well. I wasn't sure about the meaning behind these descriptions, about the 'third hand', or the 'angels', but I would like to think that I would have understood it better on paper. But I don't know :P

All in all, I definitely enjoyed the first part of the novel so I recommend people read that, but I can't guarantee the middle to end. I think they are considered short stories, so you can skip to any of the other stories that pique your interest (particularly the ones about the alien perceptions of humans).