“Ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy you can only be dragged further down by the body, into its machinery. Its rusting, creaking, vengeful, brute machinery” (pgs. 269-270). In passages such as this, Atwood shows off her remarkable ability to manipulate words into sounding beautiful even while describing something unpleasant, such as aging. Throughout the years, Margaret Atwood has earned a reputation of being quite a magician with words. After mesmerizing readers with her novel A Handmaid's Tale, her audience of devoted reader has been waiting for her to write another incredible book to rave about. So, is her latest short story collection Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales that fantastic read we’ve been waiting for? While many parts of it are wonderful, it’s not great as a whole.
Stone Mattress is eerie, dark, vivid, and compelling at times. It allows readers to delve deeper into the dark corners of Atwood’s mind, wondering along the way how in the world she comes up with such twisted stories. To give you an idea, here are some interesting moments: A retirement home is under threat of being burned down, an old woman plots to bludgeon a man who wronged her decades ago, and a man finds the mummified corpse of a groom, bow tie and all… Yeah, and those are only a few grim highlights from this collection of stories. Atwood’s creativity really shone in this book; the pages are stuffed with one shocking surprise after another until the very end.
On top of that, the prose was undeniably well-written. Sentences flowed together nicely and the vocabulary was often simple yet effective, such as in the story Revenant when Gavin thinks about his ex-girlfriend Constance and reminisces that “because she adored him, she would melt like warm honey. She was so pliable, he could do anything with her” (pg. 56). This beautifully crafted language really brings the characters and their worlds to life.
Each story is filled with lifelike characters that are wonderfully unique and well-developed, which is a great feat to achieve in short stories. They’re all interesting in their own ways, such as Verna from the title story, who is considering murder and thinks to herself, “The Verna of the day before had died, and a different Verna had solidified in her place: stunted, twisted, mangled” (pg. 229). How horrifyingly delightful! Then there’s the manipulative down-on-his-luck con artist Sam from The Freeze-Dried Groom, who sometimes wanders “the world like a snail, house on his back” (pg. 136). The amount of detail is just enough to create a colorful mental image, but not so much that it bogs the story down and slows the pace.
Atwood deserves praise for masterfully controlling the pacing within each story so as to effectively create suspense within each one. In one instance, the con artist Sam is on a date with a murderer and describes it as “the most electric thing he’s ever done. She hums with danger, like a high-tension wire; she’s a raw socket . . . The minute he releases one of her hands, he might be dead” (pg. 154). Atwood is great at crafting these tense, amusingly unpredictable scenarios, and even better at using descriptive language to capture the moods that the characters are feeling.
However, along with all the joy this book can bring, it’s also laden with disappointments. While it’s oftentimes quite the page-turner, the endings of the stories tend to be rather unsatisfying. So much time is spent repeatedly introducing the reader to new characters and narratives that the conclusions often feel sudden and rushed. These abrupt conclusions give the impression that Atwood simply decided to stop writing and call a story done just to move on to the next one. To be completely honest, the stories seemed more like random chapters from several separate novels rather than nine complete short stories.
It goes without saying that no one likes to be confused when reading a book. Unfortunately, there were numerous times throughout Stone Mattress when readers will most likely have to re-read a paragraph multiple times to make sense of it. This was due to the ever-shifting point of view, especially within stories that were told from a third-person omniscient perspective. There is a passage in Revenant that reads, “Here are the steps. Lift the right foot. He misses, cascades . . . Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?” (pg. 73) Since the point of view kept shifting throughout the story, it seemed rather unclear who thought that question: the old man, his wife, or the narrator. Was he thinking that about himself as the incident happened, was she thinking that later upon discovering him, or was the voice of the narrator interjecting to make a curious observation? Whatever the case may be, having to stop and interpret this takes the reader out of the fictional world.
Another off-putting aspect of the novel is that the first three short stories are connected, while the rest are stand-alone. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that the first three stories that are related to each other is interesting and well executed. However, after finishing the third story and going onto the fourth, none of the characters are familiar anymore, which is a jarring change. Atwood makes the reader grow so attached to the characters of Constance, Gavin, and Majorie in those first few stories that it almost feels wrong to abruptly move on from them after so much time has been invested into following their journeys. It would make more sense either to make all the plots of the stories connected in some way or have none of them connected at all.
Although the plots of the short stories aren’t all connected, they do seem to share a common theme: the underlying message that time is a powerful, unstoppable force that inevitably changes everyone, aging us and changing our perception of the world. Having such a universally relatable theme makes this book feel like it’s worth reading when all is said and done. Atwood scatters some nuggets of wisdom here and there, which are hidden enough that she isn’t hitting you over the head with these life lessons, yet the ideas still come across clearly. “Though much is taken, much remains” (pg. 218), Verna mumbles to her aging reflection in the mirror in one of the tales. Simple yet insightful remarks such as this provide food for thought that isn’t too tough to chew, but still tastes satisfying when swallowed.
Stone Mattress makes a valiant effort towards brilliancy, but falls short. It lacks that certain spark that compels one to tell everyone they know, “You need to read this book; it’s phenomenal!” Although it was suspenseful enough to be a worthwhile read as far as the dark fiction genre goes, perhaps Atwood is better suited for writing full-length novels than short story collections. Despite not being her best work to date, the book does have many outstanding moments that make up for the occasional confusing passage or sudden disappointing ending. Even with its flaws, overall the characters are compelling enough and it is written in such a lovely way that it is enjoyable to read.
Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales
By Margaret Atwood
288 pages. McClelland & Stewart. $15.95.
Comments