Stone Mattress: Nine Tales, by Margarat Atwood. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday 2014

 

Normally, in a collection of short stories, I consider them hit or miss; I find many of them fall flat for me. But this- by one of my favorite authors- is 100% hit. I loved every single one. They deal with aging and death, revenge and some small amount of fantasy.

The first three are intertwined tales, dealing with characters who all interacted in their youth, and how their lives have turned out. An aging poet, who finds that an interviewer is actually interested in his old girlfriend, who wrote fantasy books that he despised, but won incredible success. That woman is dealing with her late husband’s spirit. The other woman in the triangle the poet and the fantasist found themselves in returns, at a funeral.

Other tales include a man who buys at auction storage lockers and finds more than he wanted; another where an author has one best seller- most of the rights to which he signed away in return for his rent being paid. The title story is one of cold revenge. The last story I found disturbing- not because the blind protagonist has Charles Bonnet Syndrome and hallucinates little people around her; she’s fine with that. But rest homes around the world, including the one she lives in, are being assaulted by groups of young people who, upset with the mess the elderly have made of the world the young have to live in, are blockading the gates and preventing supplies from entering, then insisting all the staff leave- and are, finally, entering and killing the oldsters. I found this story so disturbing because I am well aware that us boomers are leaving the world in a sorry state, and that the younger generations hate us, even those of us who had little to do with the creation of said mess. I can easily see her story becoming reality. These are the most memorable of the stories, although they are all good, my favorites being the first three.

Hag-seed: The Tempest Retold, by Margaret Atwood. Hogarth Shakespeare, 2016

‘Hag-seed’ is part of the Hogarth Press’s modern retellings of Shakespeare. This one renovates ‘The Tempest’, placing it in a medium-security prison and making some of the songs in the play into rap performances.

Felix, director of a regional theater, is brought to rock bottom when he is fired and his assistant takes over his job. A widower whose child, Miranda, died at age 3, he retreats to the countryside, talking to his ghostly daughter, reading to her, and teaching her chess as, in his mind, she grows up. It’s never explained if Felix is really hallucinatory or if he is consciously bringing Miranda to life. Seeing an ad seeking someone to teach literacy to prisoners in a new program, he invents a new name and past and gets the job. He teaches the inmates to read and examine literature by using them to produce Shakespearean plays. Meanwhile he cyberstalks the men responsible for his losing his position at the theater.

A chance arrives to get revenge when, in planning to defund the inmate program, those men plan to visit the prison and observe his class. He forms an elaborate plan, taking the prisoners into his confidence and setting up a performance in which he plays Prospero. Which is where the mood changes drastically.

The first part is a serious tale of obsession and grief; then it suddenly morphs into a caper movie. Each inmate has some special talent that is necessary for the plan to come together; it’s a sort of ‘A Team’ meets Shakespeare. Even though serious stuff is going on, it’s downright funny. It’s not the climax I was expecting, but I enjoyed it.

The best parts of the book, to me, were where Felix is working with the inmates. The ways they interpret Shakespeare, and the ways Felix makes it understandable and applicable to their own lives, are fascinating and made me wonder if Atwood has worked with inmates. Of course it’s made clear that these are a special group of inmates, so I assume that in real life there might not be such harmony and agreeableness.

An unusual and intense book.

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