There is something poignant in Margaret Atwood’s new short story collection. By that I do not mean that the author behind the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” is not as sharp as before, or as full of the literary imagination that makes us see life itself in a new way. No, it’s more like age has taken its toll. Atwood is now 83 years old, she has become a widow, and it is only the experiences of an old, wise woman that fill the collection. It is new this year, although some of the stories have been published in various magazines in the past. The wake sells “Grouse in the sunset” contains fifteen stories. The first three go under the heading “Tig & Nell”, the next eight under “Min onde mor”, while the last four come together under the label “Nell & Tig”. Then Nell has become a widow, Tig is gone, but at the same time he is strongly present in the memories she brings up. Here I would like to direct attention to salesperson Inger Gjelsvik. She is aware of the nuances in the language Atwood uses – which are also discussed in the text – and picks up terms and vocabulary that were hip in the 1960s and 1970s, but which now give the impression of something outdated. Who wins slut or fly rag today? As you can see, Atwood’s feminist stance is present, as always. And the title is even better in Norwegian than in English, if that is possible. “Old Babes in the Wood” has fewer meanings, I think, than “Ryper i sunset”. Hats off, Gjelsvik! Then and now Both in the stories about Nell and Tig and some of the others, we meet people who look back on something that happened many years ago. This is where nostalgia comes in. He is not embarrassing, it becomes more like a perceptible pause in the present, where a person takes stock and thinks about what made sense in all the four days that followed each other. In this way, Atwood can be reminiscent of an author like Elizabeth Strout, or why not Alice Munro, who may be the best-known short story writer from Canada? Then it seems that Atwood, who probably pays most attention to her novels, is also a brilliant short story writer. This is her eleventh collection, so she is a novice in the genre so far. BOOKER PRIZE: Margaret Atwood accepted the Booker Prize in 2019 for the novel “The Testaments”, which is a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale” from 1985. Photo: Alastair Grant / AP Portraying our times But Atwood had not been Atwood unless she uses the words to portray a surprising look at the world we live in. In “Conversation with a dead person” a contemporary author meets George Orwell (yes, he who wrote the classic dystopias “1984” and “Animal Farm”) and discusses what fictional situations he wrote about in the 1940s that have become realities today, and where he missed. How does he view the surveillance that social media brings with it, and what does he think of the increasing political polarisation? How will he react to the cancellation that many artists are subjected to today? It will be a very entertaining and insightful talk. In “Impatient Griselda”, an octopus-like creature from another galaxy must calm people who are detained as a result of a threatening pandemic. He does this by telling stories from the earth, a globe that he does not know about. Lack of context and creative linguistic solutions are laughable, for example when he describes food using the common term snarky. Later he describes a ride on a snask, because what is snask before it becomes snask? The octopus is a carnivore, must know. In another of the stories, a snail takes up residence in a woman, a bit of a journey of the soul! Here too, human life and our natural actions are thematized from the perspective of an outsider. It’s cleverly done – here Atwood can remind you of Tor Åge Bringsværd or the wonderful illustrator and children’s book author Shaun Tan, who also doesn’t go out of his way to depict the outdoors in a surreal way. Love and criticism Margaret Atwood is a fearless writer, always sharp and original. Not all the stories are equally strong, some of them are almost like drafts of a novel. Then they become too fluent and circumstantial. But they are in the minority. So what kind of essence do I extract from the collection? This is Atwood as we know her: Playful, curious, sharp. Let me end with a quote from the story of Hypatia, the mathematician in Alexandria, who 400 years after Christ was murdered in the most hideous way. She was skinned alive. Was it because she was a woman, or was she given too much power? Laconically, Atwood sums up her soliloquy, which Hypatia keeps after she is dead: news reports Photo: Aschehoug Title: “Ryper i solunding” Author: Margaret Atwood Publisher: Inger Gjelsvik Genre: Stories Publisher: Aschehoug Number of pages: 279
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“Grouse in sunset” by Margaret Atwood – news Culture and entertainment
