Synopses & Reviews
Atwood triumphs with these dazzling, personal stories in her first collection since
Wilderness Tips.
In these ten interrelated stories Atwood traces the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it, while evoking the drama and the humour that colour common experiences — the birth of a baby, divorce and remarriage, old age and death. With settings ranging from Toronto, northern Quebec, and rural Ontario, the stories begin in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. Then the narrative goes back in time to the forties and moves chronologically forward toward the present.
In “The Art of Cooking and Serving,” the twelve-year-old narrator does her best to accommodate the arrival of a baby sister. After she boldly declares her independence, we follow the narrator into young adulthood and then through a complex relationship. In “The Entities,” the story of two women haunted by the past unfolds. The magnificent last two stories reveal the heartbreaking old age of parents but circle back again to childhood, to complete the cycle.
By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood’s celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage. This is vintage Atwood, writing at the height of her powers.
Synopsis
Atwood triumphs with these dazzling, personal stories in her first collection since
Wilderness Tips.
In these ten interrelated stories Atwood traces the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it, while evoking the drama and the humour that colour common experiences the birth of a baby, divorce and remarriage, old age and death. With settings ranging from Toronto, northern Quebec, and rural Ontario, the stories begin in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. Then the narrative goes back in time to the forties and moves chronologically forward toward the present.
In “The Art of Cooking and Serving,” the twelve-year-old narrator does her best to accommodate the arrival of a baby sister. After she boldly declares her independence, we follow the narrator into young adulthood and then through a complex relationship. In “The Entities,” the story of two women haunted by the past unfolds. The magnificent last two stories reveal the heartbreaking old age of parents but circle back again to childhood, to complete the cycle.
By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwoods celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage. This is vintage Atwood, writing at the height of her powers.
About the Author
Margaret Atwoods internationally bestselling fiction includes The Handmaids Tale, Wilderness Tips, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake, The Penelopiad, and, most recently, The Tent. She has received numerous honours, including the Booker Prize, The Giller Prize, the Governor Generals Award, the Premio Mondello in Italy, and Le Chevalier dans lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres in France. She lives in Toronto.
Reading Group Guide
1. Discuss the form and structure of the book. How was your reading affected by the fact that
Moral Disorder is neither a novel nor a collection of freestanding stories? What freedoms does this form provide both the author and the reader? What was the impact of the shift in point of view from first person to third person? In what way did these shifts correspond to the shifts in Nells life?
2. A starred review of Moral Disorder appearing in Kirkus Reviews describes Nell as “a freelance journalist and sometime teacher whose eventual commitment to writing seems born of the secrets and evasions into which a lifetime of relationships and responsibilities propels her.” What is your understanding of Nells impulse as a writer? In what way does being a writer shape her approach to the world around her?
3. How did you first interpret Tigs news that “they just killed the leader of the interim governing council” in “The Bad News”? How did you respond to the narrators frustrated musings on Tigs words, and on the violent history of the world?
4. Why does the narrator find Sarah Field Splints domestic ideals so appealing in “The Art of Cooking and Serving”? How does she feel about the maid shown in the photographs, in daytime and more formal dress? When you were a teenager, where did you look for role models and fantasies about your future?
5. What accounts for the sisters tremendous differences in “The Headless Horseman”? How did their mother address these differences? How did their perceptions of her, and of each other, change throughout their lifetimes?
6. In “My Last Duchess,” what personal woes do the narrator and her boyfriend project onto the poem? Obtain a copy of this Robert Browning classic and read it as a group. Whose interpretation do you favor? Was the duchess a victim, or a tart? Would the count have been concerned about his daughters fate?
7. What does the narrator want from a home and a city in “The Other Place”? How is she changed by her encounters with Owen?
8. How would you characterize Oona, who is introduced in “Monopoly”? As “governess,” should Nell have let the boys win at games? How did she adapt to the other new worlds to which Tig introduced her?
9. What meaning did you ascribe to the title of the featured story, “Moral Disorder”? Did you think of disorder in terms of disarray, or in terms of a malfunction or medical condition? In the title story, what morality does Nell find or not find in nature, from the profusion of crops to the demise of the lamb in the ending? How does the title apply to the collection as a whole?
10. Do Lizzie and Gladys share common ground in “White Horse”? What allows Lizzie to become freed from misdiagnosis and saved from attempted suicide? Why couldnt Gladys be rescued?
11. What was the real reason Nell felt compelled to house Oona in “The Entities”? In the closing lines of this story Atwood writes, “In the end, well all become stories. Or else well become entities. Maybe its the same.” What entities have you left behind in various houses?
12. In “The Labrador Fiasco” the story of the doomed explorers sets an ominous tone as the narrators father copes with life after a stroke. She concludes the story by saying he is right to doubt her skill. What universal emotions are captured here, as parents reach the point of needing their children to become their guides?
13. In “The Boys at the Lab," we are told that the narrators mother only allows happy endings. How would you characterize the ending of her story? What is the significance of the books closing imagethe memory of the aristocratic Indian venturing into raw wilderness?
14. Compare Moral Disorder to the Atwood fiction you have read previously. Are there traces of her signature themes, such as dystopia or violated trusts, in these stories? What new territory does this collection chart?