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Moral Disorder and Other Stories

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Margaret Atwood is acknowledged as one of the foremost writers of our time. In Moral Disorder she has created a series of interconnected stories that trace the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it--those of parents, of siblings, of children, of friends, of enemies, of teachers, and even of animals. As in a photograph album, time is measured in sharp, clearly observed moments. The '30s, the '40s, the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, the '90s, and the present --all are here. The settings vary: large cities, suburbs, farms, northern forests.

The first story, "The Bad News," is set in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. The narrative then switches time as the central character moves through childhood and adolescence in "The Art of Cooking and Serving," "The Headless Horseman," and "My Last Duchess." We follow her into young adulthood in "The Other Place" and then through a complex relationship, traced in four of the stories: "Monopoly," "Moral Disorder," "White Horse," and "The Entities." The last two stories, "The Labrador Fiasco" and "The Boys at the Lab," deal with 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. As the New York Times has said: "The reader has the sense that Atwood has complete access to her people's emotional histories, complete understanding of their hearts and imaginations."

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

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About the author

Margaret Atwood

607 books85.5k followers
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.


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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,201 reviews
Profile Image for Baba.
3,912 reviews1,364 followers
December 15, 2021
I'm not quite sure what to think about this collection of 11 connected short stories about the hidden pain and suffering within a family and the protagonist's life. It's wonderfully written as per; the characterisation of the main character is superbly crafted.

I honestly could very easily put this down, when I wanted to, and had to forced myself to finish it... which turned out to be nice, because I really really enjoyed the final story. Still a must-read for Atwood fans, for the structure and styles (!) of the book alone.

2018 read
25 reviews5 followers
December 4, 2013
It's me, not you, I want to apologize to Margaret Atwood. One of my all-time favorite authors, who I consider one of my oldest and best friends, although we've never met. I have fallen out of love with her. I confess to not having finished the book. This is unheard of, like not having a second slice of pizza. I won't go as far as to say there is a sense of stagnation in the stories. Perhaps she has all too successfully evoked the ennui of average life. Attempting a committed and thorough read, I suffered the heart palpitations that the humdrum of day after day sometimes (often) does to me. Here we are again, day after day, with the traffic lights, and digestion, and voices talking talking talking and rarely getting to an important point, and then it is another day all over again. Moral Disorder was like listening to someone you love tell incredibly detailed stories, but not be able to get to the point in a multi-climactic way through the course of a page (that one expects from M.A.), let alone in the course of a short story or a chapter. So, disappointing. But, I'm sure it must be me, not her, this falling out of love business. If it is her, I am sorry to say she lost that loving feeling of multiple epiphanies neatly earned in her common language loving and detail accumulating way. She's just like mere mortals here, the rest of us, walking around, telling all the details as if they matter without -and here I finally arrive at the main point myself- really, really showing us why they do, striking a heart chord. Maybe in her next book, or if I revisit an old one, we will get our groove back, because now I am bereft and alone. I counted on her to always be the one, the person who named things in such a way that they resonated in my chest.
Profile Image for Marigold.
832 reviews
April 7, 2009
Margaret Atwood = writer I am most intimidated yet inspired by. These short stories form a semi-autobiographical sketch about a woman, Nell, from childhood through into her 60's, but are not in chronological order. The stories focus on her relationships with her parents, husband, sister, husband's ex-wife, and more. It's like getting a box of really cool photographs of someone you don't know, & their family, & you're trying to piece together their story from the photos & figure out which order they go in! Only better, because by the end of the book, you can see the big picture - maybe it's more like a jigsaw. Beautifully written & as always, insightful, fresh yet filled with "yes, I've felt just like that!" moments.
Profile Image for Ashley Daviau.
2,127 reviews1,020 followers
October 13, 2019
I think if anyone but Atwood had written this it would have been a bit boring. But Atwood has such a way with words that she makes even the most ordinary tale absolutely fascinating! That’s what I love about her writing, she could write a grocery list and it would be beautiful. This is definitely not my favourite of hers but I did still thoroughly enjoy it! I don’t think this is the book to start with if you haven’t read any Atwood yet, read her more well known work and then you’ll be able to fully appreciate this collection of stories.
Profile Image for Berengaria.
776 reviews136 followers
September 4, 2021
2.5 stars
Review for German language audio book.

Wonderfully written, but largely plotless and meh-to-boring interconnected stories about a fairly normal Canadian woman. It is like listening to random tales of someone you don't know. At times, that can be interesting if you have some connection to what's happening. But it mostly won't. You'll wonder why you should care about her.

For example, the plot of "The Headless Horseman" is like this:"I made a wonky papermaché head of the Headless Horseman for Halloween once when I was a kid. Nothing really happened with it. At least nothing that had much significance or impact on me or my sister. But I made a head once. The End." Since I'm not in the Alice Munro Fan Club, I find I just can't appreciate seemingly plucked-from-the-air stuff like that. Try as I might, I just can't find subtlety or depth in it. It remains an ungrounded, disconnected story with no significance (other than to the person who wrote it/lived it)

Once again, though. The writing was fabulous.

As for the readers: Barbara Nüsse does a PHENOMENAL job. Her inflections and tone are pitch perfect the entire time. Only niggle: a few mispronounced English words. (corn-ED beef, instead of corned beef, for example)
Hans Peter Hallwachs, on the other hand, reads as if he's a bored school kid called to the front of the class to read an essay. Too fast, too monotone, no real inflection, disinterested ... as if simply wants to get it over and run back to his desk.
Profile Image for Jennifer Barrett.
17 reviews5 followers
March 20, 2011
I chose to read Moral Disorder for my next Atwood book because it was a book of short stories. I thought it would be a good decision as it would be easy to read during my sporadic down time. I will not go so far as to say that Atwood deceived me, however after the third story I realized how truly misinformed I had been. The picturesque narrative of a woman’s life bounds along seamlessly with ever-changing perspective from first to third person views and makes the book impossible to put down.
“Bad News” is the story of a woman and her husband in their autumn years. As the protagonist (Nell) reflects upon the physical and mental constraints of her age she hints at the layout of the book. She muses that tenses define their lives. “Past tense, back then; future tense, not yet. We live in the small window between them, the space we’ve only recently come to think of as still, and really it’s no smaller than anyone else’s window.”
The second vignette transports the woman to the summer of her 11th year where she is stoically awaiting the birth of her sibling. She has taken on the role of caregiver for her mother during her fragile state. She mourns for her own loss of childhood with the responsibility of the new brother or sister that will soon join the family. Atwood’s skill at character development excels as she begins the third story “The Headless Horseman”. Written two years after her sister is born it is a “window” into how the sibling relationship will evolve. The elder sister reveals that the younger is anxious about everything in her world, exhibits odd behaviors, and is prone to unprovoked breakdowns. “Her approach to life was tentative.” The family must modify their way of life to accommodate this sensitive child. As the stories leapfrog from one decade to the next and back the relationship of the sisters becomes more complicated and intriguing. Nell builds her own family and becomes entangled in a non-traditional relationship where she must also contend with the emotional demands of her sister and self-imposed estrangement from her parents.
Each story is a change of tense and tone into which the reader builds a deep understanding of Nell and her strengths and weaknesses. Such an intimate knowledge of a character allows for a level of sympathy that is truly rare; and as Nell’s life progresses it is not the plot of the story that is as poignant as the rationale behind her choices and resulting consequences. Although there is no chronological continuity to the arrangement of the stories one is left with the impression of putting together a puzzle resulting in a sense of accomplishment that accompanies the completion of the book.

Profile Image for Stephen Durrant.
674 reviews160 followers
April 1, 2009
Does anyone write crisper, cleaner English than Margaret Atwood? A few hundred of her sentences per day might help all of us write better. So, on the level of language, no complaints! In other ways, though, this is an uneven collection. It begins brilliantly and ends well, but the middle sections about the narrator and her life with Tig in the countryside just did not engage me. The problem may arise in part from the somewhat ambiguous nature of this book. Is it a collection of short stories or a novel? I read it as the latter until the two last pieces, both about declining parents gradually becoming "stories," which are detached from the earlier pieces. I know the novel has taken on new forms. I can accept that but somehow "Moral Disorder" seemed to shift from one thing to something else two-thirds of the way through. Nevertheless, several of these chapters are brilliant. "The Headless Horseman" is a good evocation of childhood, as well moving masterfully between past and present. And "My Last Duchess" is a wonderful and very funny account of two types of readers and the unbridgeable gap between them. Any "literary" type who has ever been involved with a strict rationalist will find something familiar in this piece. Finally, I just read a review of Atwood's new nonfiction work "Payback" and have decided that amazon.com will soon reap the benefit from yet another purchase.
Profile Image for Rebecca.
3,995 reviews3,314 followers
April 17, 2023
The title came from Atwood’s late partner, Graeme Gibson, who stopped writing novels in 1996 and gave her permission to reuse the name of his work in progress. It suggests that all is not quite as it should be. Then again, morality is subjective. Though her parents disapprove of Nell setting up a household with Tig, who is still married to Oona, the mother of his children, theirs ends up being a stable and traditional relationship; nothing salacious about it.

The first five and last two stories are in the first person, while a set of four in the middle is in the third person – including my favorites, “White Horse” and “The Entities,” two knockout stand-alones. Nell and Tig retreat to a farm for this segment, and Nell has to deal with her sister’s mental illness and her assumption that Tig doesn’t want to have more children. I also liked “The Art of Cooking and Serving,” in which Nell becomes a big sister at age 12. There are a few nothing-y stories, though, and I struggled to see this as having the same main character all the way through – but that is probably part of the point: We have so many experiences, and change so much, in the course of a life that we feel we’ve become different people. This is about the memories and connections that last even as the externals alter beyond recognition.

Two favorite passages:

“Maybe she would grow cunning, up here on the farm. Maybe she would absorb some of the darkness, which might not be darkness at all but only knowledge. She would turn into a woman others came to for advice. She would be called in emergencies. She would roll up her sleeves and dispense with sentimentality, and do whatever blood-soaked, bad-smelling thing had to be done. She would become adept with axes.”

“All that anxiety and anger, those dubious good intentions, those tangled lives, that blood. I can tell about it or I can bury it. In the end, we’ll all become stories. Or else we’ll become entities. Maybe it’s the same.”


Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Profile Image for Briar's Reviews.
2,133 reviews560 followers
April 21, 2024
I have a lot of reading goals, and one of them is to read all of the books written by Margaret Atwood. She's an excellent Canadian literary icon and I enjoy her writing style. I stumbled upon Moral Disorder and Other Stories at a local used book sale and I scooped it up!

This is essentially a collection of stories that are all connected in some way, tracing the lives of various friends, families, animals, and enemies. It's a unique way of telling a story and I 100% did not get all of it. I need an English Professor to break this whole book down for me. Because it's beautiful and I can tell I'm missing something... and probably a lot of the obvious ones.

For me, this wasn't the greatest read for enjoyment. I much would have preferred to have this as a reading assignment where it could be broken down and explained to me. Margaret Atwood is SUCH a good author that she's best read when someone helps you see the whole picture. I'll be doing some research and finding some explanations... but I just had to say, my score reflects that I read this for pleasure but really needed this to be in a professional setting instead. I didn't get the full effect out of the book. Her writing is FANTASTIC and I'm sure it's way bigger than I realize.

Two out of five stars.
May 16, 2024
Margaret Atwood is a wonderful writer. Her prose is unique as much as it is mesmerizing, and sometimes I even say that it reminds me of Jeanette Winterson's. I saw this book in one of my favourite secondhand bookshops (The Shakespeare Hospice Bookshop) which I only landed in as I was on the hunt for fudge. Fudge or books? I take both. It's a treasure trove full of beautiful books, and their Classics section is so full it makes me dizzy.

Back to the book itself, I'd say the writing was wonderful, written in true Atwood style, but the story (or stories) were inconsistent, and she lost me around the halfway mark, purely because what she was writing about didn't interest me. It was confusing at first as to whether this was a novel, or a collection of short stories. I'd now go with the latter.

I'd recommend this to true Atwood fans, and although there were some takeaway thoughts from this, it definitely hasn't topped The Handmaid’s Tale.
Profile Image for Pallavi.
1,142 reviews215 followers
March 17, 2017
*****5.0*****

A collection of short-stories written by our own Atwood, has 11 connected stories showing different times of a family. Their pains, struggles through a female protagonist, Nell. The last story is supposed to be her own and not connected to others.

The Bad News is the present of our Protagonist where she is an old woman and her husband Tig, who too is old and seen sharing talks on the news in the newspaper and Nell reflects on how they have grown used to each other's habit which changed in due course of time.

The Art of Cooking and Serving takes us to Nell's childhood where her always healthy and spontaneous mother is pregnant and is behaving normal at all. Nell is confused because of this transformation and wants her old mother back, even though she never fights and shows that she understands (where as she doesn't).When the baby comes Nell finds herself helping her mother with the baby which is always restless and wishes to have a normal childhood like the others.

The Headless Horseman is when Nell and her sister talks about their childhood when Nell went to a Halloween Trick -or-Treat, with her home made costume of "Headless horseman". Her sister was two and Nell, on the verge of thirteen felt foolish to go to Trick-or-Treat. But her sister kind of liked idea and was the only one to react and keep that head for years in her games.

The Last Duchess has a teeneager Nell, who jumps across different boyfriends whereas her current one is Bill. Bill is good with math and bad at literature. Nell is good at literature and she studies "The last Duchess", a poem by Robert Browning so that it would help Bill. But soon they both find themselves into an argument on the poem where they Bill takes side with Dutchess and Nell with the Duke, making them break up.

The Other Place has an Young Nell,who is switching jobs and making just enough money and owing literally to nothing. She is confused when her friends are settled with husband and kids, while she wonders does she too want to settle down! But these are the thoughts she has when she is married to Tig and remembers her time of life when she was everywhere but yet nowhere.

Monopoly, Moral Disorder and White Horse are the stories where Nell tells about her marriage to Tig, life with his boys, ex-wife and life in farm where she had wonderful adventures but still wondered about her existence. The life where she never complained and had a daughter and lived without questions till then. Her struggle with her sister's health and the story of her sister Lizzie who was always throwing tantrums till then.

The Entities is a strange story where Nell meets a real estate agent Lillie. Lillie helps her find houses at different times in her life and also to buy a house for his husband's ex-wife,Oona. On the other hand plagued with ill-health, Oona dies in the same house and Lillie is convinced that there is bad presence in the house. A cleanser is called and cleans the house saying "entities" visit this house where the death happened. Nell sells the house to a gay couple who finds this story very amusing and hilarious and Nell laughs with them.

The Labrador Fiasco is about Nell's father, when he passes his days as an invalid after a stroke. He never recovers fully and Nell finds her mother reading him a book about the doomed Labrador exploration mission of Hubbard and Wallace. But again a stroke takes his memory away and her father seems more far away than ever.

The boys at the Lab is supposed to be Atwood's own narration when she was taking care of her own 90-year old mother. She goes through different photographs and tries to get as much stories as possible from her mother, who is particularly interested with 2 men at her husband's lab called Cam and Ray.Together they were the "the boys at the lab",where as the author only vaguely remembers about them, her mother tells her that Cam died of an unspecified disease and young. Sometime later her mother tells her that an Indian had joined the team with the boys and he was well mannered. Author doesn't get any other information on the matter even after asking and keeps her wondering what all other than the Indian she might have missed!

Even though, only the last story is said to be from Atwood's own life, I feel that all the stories are from her life though narrated through a character called Nell. Because Atwood is with Graeme Gibson from many years and they too moved to a farm near Ontario and had a baby girl. So all the stories points to her own story in a vague manner and that surely gives a personal touch to this collection.
I don't have to say anything about the author's style of writing, when she one of my favorites and one of the best ones. Lovely stories and I loved each of them.


Happy Reading!!
Profile Image for Stela.
1,024 reviews414 followers
October 6, 2015

While reading Margaret Atwood’s Moral Disorder I kept remembering William Burroughs’s wish that his Naked Lunch be read in any order and direction. In his case, it was an attempt to challenge the narrative by denying chronology – no event could pretend to have happened before or after another.

There is a similar attempt towards the dissolution of the novel In Margaret Atwood’s book, for every “chapter” can also be read independently, but in this case more as a suggestion that life is a series of framed events, a shot of individual scenes, than as an attempt to tame time. The narrative technique is once again the framed story, encapsulating this time other framed stories.

Indeed, every one of the eleven stories is a window to another one (sometimes with a window of its own), in a skilful game of outer and inner stories mirroring themselves in an infinite mise en abîme to reveal the main theme of the book, the eternal recurrence, the curse and the salvation of mankind during the tragedies of history and personal life.

In the first one, Bad News, the narrator imagines herself and her husband in a distant past however not so different from her present, given that the same indistinct danger lurked behind bad news (be it the modern killing of a political leader, or the ancient imminence of a barbarian invasion). The parallelism serves to prove that there is nothing new under the sun since humanity has always found a way of auto preservation – either in next generations’ obstinate resumption of the ancestors, or in conservation of the past in the artistic collective memory.

Even if they manage to cross the Rhine, even if they aren’t slain in thousands, even if the river fails to run red with their blood, they won’t get here for a long time. Not in our lifetime, perhaps. Glanum is in no danger, not yet.

Thus the theme of eternal return subtly generates another one (in a never-ending parallelism) – the literature as a mise en abîme of the real life. We are fiction, or become fiction, we imitate or reject what we’ve read, we complete or compensate the lack of information about people by imagining their destinies:

All that anxiety and anger, those dubious good intentions, those tangled lives, that blood. I can tell about it or I can bury it. In the end, we’ll all become stories. Or else we’ll become entities. Maybe it’s the same.

Moreover, by choosing to tell, the artist within us often chooses to improve. To transform life into art. That permanent alternation between the outer and the inner stories in Moral Disorder is used to confront the character with an ideal or a feared image: the perfectly groomed servant to counteract the eleven-year-old girl’s feeling of overwhelming responsibility (The Art of Cooking and Serving); the Halloween head to conceal inner monsters (The Headless Horseman); Robert Browning’s duke to fight moral weakness (My Last Duchess); the story of the unpredictable mare to tame the spirit without breaking it (The White Horse) etc.

Finally, by choosing to tell, the artist often chooses to fill in the blanks. To create a story from a name, a piece of information, a picture:

I want them to step forward, out of the ranks of the extras. I want them to have speaking parts. I want them to shine.

And whenever life steps into fiction it finds its reason: to create a pattern for life. The eternal recurrence through revolving doors:

Now we’re at the door. The persistence of material objects is becoming an amazement to me. It’s the same door – the one I used to go in through, out through, year after year, in my daily clothing or in various outfits and disguises, not thinking at all that I would one day be standing in front of this very same door with my grey-haired little sister. But all doors used regularly are doors to the afterlife.
Profile Image for Abbie | ab_reads.
603 reviews436 followers
August 31, 2019
3.5 stars

Any book I read after the epic conclusion to Hobb’s Realm of the Elderling series was bound to feel a bit flat, so I thought I’d turn to the queen that is Atwood! Although I ‘only’ rated this one a 3.5, that’s in relation to other Atwoods - an Atwood 3.5 is still better than most!
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In another author’s hands Moral Disorder might have been dull. A series of interconnected vignettes, pinpointing crucial moments, periods and scenarios in one woman’s life through her childhood as an unwilling babysitter to her surprise younger sister, born when she was 11, to middle aged to old when she’s looking after her ailing parents. Many reviews label the book mundane, and while some mean that critically, others praise what Atwood makes out of the mundane - I’m in the latter camp.
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It’s like Atwood has some secret door into the human psyche that she can open up and peer through, plucking memories directly from your childhood or adolescence and weaving them into her stories, only slightly altered, but otherwise a universal experience.
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My favourites were the two childhood stories, followed by the beginning of the protagonist’s involvement with Tig and Oona and their life on a higgledy piggledy farm. I’d recommend for already-fans of Atwood for more of her dry wit and keen observations, although not a life-altering one!
Profile Image for Will Ansbacher.
341 reviews94 followers
June 17, 2015
This is described as a collection of short stories but it is actually a series of portraits of one person. So although you could, you wouldn’t really want to read them out of order. They chronicle the life of Nell (though we don’t know her name for the first part of the book as it’s written in the first person), with Atwood’s usual sharp observations and dry wit.

Nell was born in the thirties and grew up well before the social changes of the sixties, so is a bit uncomfortable with them. In one early chapter she is living alone in Vancouver:
“At the time I’d set out, all women were expected to get married ... but by the end of this period – it was only eight years, not so long after all – a wave had swept through, changing the landscape completely. ... Sexual jealousy was like using the wrong fork, marriage was a joke, and those already married found their once-solid unions crumbling like defective stucco. You were supposed to hang loose, to collect experiences, to be a rolling stone.
Isn’t that what I’d been doing, years before the widespread advent of facial hair and roach clips? But I felt myself too old, or possibly too solemn, for the love beads and pothead crowd. They wanted to live in the moment, but like frogs, not like wolves ... But I was raised in the age of strenuousness. Relaxation bored me”
She has a rather fractious relationship with her parents, feeling their critical “thought rays” halfway across the country. She also has a rather fragile younger sister Lizzie.
“She takes a pill every day, for a chemical imbalance she was born with. That was it, all along. That was what made the bad times for her. Not my monstrousness at all. I believe that, most of the time.”
In the second half of the book, she moves in with Tig, a separated father of two boys with a complicated relationship with his ex, Oona, who initially was Nell’s friend and mentor in the publishing business. Moral Disorder is the defining chapter, describing her increasingly complex and compromised life on the small decrepit farm they buy; it’s one of my favourites and there really isn't space here to add all the quotes or excerpts I wanted to.

These people together with Lillie, a real estate agent they use frequently, form the core of all the stories. One or two (eg The Labrador Fiasco) don’t quite fit, they were probably written at a different time, but you can still read them as if the characters were the same.

It is lovely, tender, incisive and witty writing. Atwood always keeps things tight and focussed, and in this case, maybe too much; because I really wish the book had been longer.
Profile Image for Numidica.
459 reviews8 followers
September 28, 2019
Every time I read a book by Margaret Atwood, I’m reminded how much I like her writing. My sister has a somewhat different view; I remember telling her how much I liked The Blind Assassin, and she replied, “Atwood? Quite bleak, eh?” It is true that there is a hard edge to Ms. Atwood’s writing; she does not suffer fools, and she has a rather stoic view of life. Compassion and love do not flow freely from her. And yet, there is love in her writing, the quiet abiding kind, and it co-exists along with the darker parts, as it does in real life. I like her honesty, both about herself and others. I was struck by her comment about her mother, “who never lied.” Her mother simply became silent if a polite but dishonest response was expected. My father had the same habit, and he once said to me, “Never lie, but also remember that you do not have to tell everything you know.” His other aphorism along these lines was that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I’m sure Ms. Atwood would approve.

Some interviewer or another asked Atwood if Moral Disorder was partly / mostly autobiographical, and she slyly avoided the question, which to my mind sounds like a yes. Certainly the known facts of her life are closely followed by the stories. Her stories about her life on the farm are in turns funny, sad, and dark; to anyone who has ever had responsibility for livestock of any kind, her experiences are viscerally recognizable as truth. Her ending to one story remarks upon her growing familiarity with cutting implements as it relates to killing animals for food, and is there perhaps in that sentence a knowing wink about her understanding of the mechanics of murder? As is often the case, Atwood is obscure, but smilingly so. Here we have the darker, but very interesting Margaret Atwood.

**SPOILER ALERT** In her description of the navigation of loving a married man, we see Ms. Atwood at her most generous. As in real life, her character, Nell, moves in with “Tig”, and plays a pantomime with Tig’s wife, Oona, who is gradually losing her reputation in the publishing world, along with her income. Ultimately, in the face of Oona’s emerging mental issues, and to save her from poverty, Nell buys Oona a house, with the assistance of the truly wonderful, lovable Jewish real estate agent, Lillie. The story of Lillie was warm and also sad, and true to life (I think we have a theme here), and it was one of my favorites in the book. Tig's response to Nell at this amazing act was, "You're crazy! Thank you!"

Her stories about the decline and then death of her father and, five years later, her mother will resonate with those of us who have helped with parents experiencing the shipwreck of advanced old age. These stories are tender, and her love of her parents is crystal clear. Her admiration for her mother’s willingness to live in the wilds of Canada at a "lab" with her father during WW2 is clear. By contrast, the stories of her youth are illuminating about Margaret’s character; she lived in a sort of on-the-edge poverty while working in editing and academia for many years. I assume it was the publication of The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985 that finally brought her a measure of financial independence, but being schooled in poverty is a thing she never forgot. It colors her and informs her writing with realism in the same way Elizabeth Strout's upbringing informs her work..

I know a writer’s work is really good when I finish a book and immediately think, “what else of hers can I read?” Margaret Atwood will be (and is) counted as one of the greatest writers of our era, and I hope she continues writing for years to come, though Atwood herself would be the first to shake her head at that and say that time and age will do for all of us before long. Still, one can hope.
570 reviews44 followers
June 24, 2014
This was my first Atwood ever. I'm surprised how much I like this book. It's a collection of quite wonderful short stories which all belong together and tell episodes from the life of Nell. Every story has a different atmosphere. I enjoyed her writing so much that after finishing the last story I started again with the first one just to see wether the reading would feel different with having in mind the other stories. Highly recommended.
Profile Image for Dawn.
1,331 reviews73 followers
December 23, 2015
I did not like these stories much. They are too disjointed for me to follow easily but the biggest annoyance for me was the character of Nell. She was just one of those creations that drove me crazy. Her attitudes to life and other people were frustrating for me, I did actually spend a bit of time yelling at a fictional person I got so irked.
Profile Image for capture stories.
117 reviews66 followers
November 8, 2020
Moral Disorder consists of 11 short stories, vignettes, a touch of Memoir but not precisely that, sounds like an autobiography, though it does not fit fully into that genre. Words that glimpse, crisp, and gasp like walking through a time tunnel that features various stages of the characters’ lives, which are not in chronological order. The main character, “Nell,” is a compelling character who changes roles from a daughter to a sister then becoming “mistress,” only in the end has she adopted a wife and mother’s role. Wow, what a journey. For a woman who has so many changing parts in a lifetime, I must say it is not easy at all. However, come to think of it, isn’t that an accepted norm for a woman in society? Women taking up multiple roles and responsibilities and tackling all odds? What about Nell’s part being the third person in someone’s marriage, which was unacceptable to society and her own family. Ok, enough of my rambles. I’ll leave that question to one’s interpretation.

Interesting, isn’t it? A book that does not fits into any genre but standalone in its uniques and prose. Ordinary yet extraordinary. Yes. Pretty much Atwood’s remarkable style, an author who carries her presence and trademarks. Many stories seemed similar and reflections to parts of Atwood’s life and upbringing. What I loved most is Atwood’s precise and concise observation of life from young to the old with stamps of Atwood’s wits and humor. Atwood’s effortless distillation of this formative experience is enough to make a reader wonder at the stories reflected on herself and her family. She rarely does so in any of her written works.

Despite the love and adoration for the author and this book, there are parts where I think it is inconsistent that can be withdrawing. The exact turnoff had been in irregular switches of narration between the first person, third person, and first-person again that can take lots of concentration to follow through.

Closing, my interest has been piqued here and there, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny … bit, the Moral Disorder had wondered me by calling every detail and character into reality between contending conflicts but yet another brilliant piece of literature. Endorsed with the prose that feels like poetry, it can make its readers feel nostalgic, and most are in comfort, I hope, where scenes of reminiscent to readers’ past can be unfolded while reading. It is a comfortable and pleasurable read, where I have curled up on a couch with a cup of coffee while allowing my mind to travel into the imaginary world constructed by Atwood.
Profile Image for Mary Soderstrom.
Author 21 books76 followers
July 17, 2014
During our recent trip to Europe, I thought about books a lot. Margaret Atwood's short story collection Moral Disorder was one that kept coming to mind after a day spent in the 1800 year old Roman ruins at Conínbriga, Portugal.

These stories are about the best things Atwood has written in a couple of decades, in my opinion. She opens herself up as she has rarely, writing about people who are very much like herself and her family. At first the reader may think the stories are unrelated, but each one throws light on some rather important concerns: what will become of the world we live in? How to love? Is there a connection between the concrete everyday world and something that transcends time and space?

This last lies at the center of the first story "The Bad News." An aging couple, Nell and Tig, struggle to deal with the bad news that awaits them every day in early Twenty-first Century newspaper headlines. But Nell finds herself slipping into another time and place when the news was equally bad, Southern France in the Third Century C.E. The barbarians are outside the gates, Romans like this other Nell have reason to be afraid. The question Atwood poses is: should we prepare for the end of the world as we know it, too?

Conínbriga in central Portugal is very much like Glanum, the French ruined town that starts Nell's musings. A thriving place for a couple of hundred years at the crossroads of Roman thoroughfares on the Iberian peninsula, its people retrenched in the Third Century apparently out of fear for the advancing Barbarians. They effectively abandoned part of the town, tearing houses down and building a defensive wall five meters high inside of which they hung on for a couple of more centuries.

The extent of the town was forgotten until the late 1920s when a Portuguese archeologist began excavation of the site. Since then off a good portion of the town has been uncovered. The mosaics are extraordinary, and the House of Fountains, one of the houses left outside the wall, a dream of a Roman villa (see photo.)

Visiting ruins like this (or the medieval part of nearby Coimbra) invites speculation who lived there and what their lives were like. Just as Atwood's collection suggests connections between incidents and people, so wandering through the vestiges of the past summons up reflections about human nature, strife and survival.

Profile Image for Francine Maessen.
657 reviews56 followers
February 25, 2018
Oooooh, that was soooo good.

It took me more time to read than I expected, just because it was so good. After every story I had to put this book down for at least an hour because I needed to recover from another amazing story, I needed time to reflect. Atwood's descriptions are marvelous, and I love the characters in these stories. Especially from a feminist point of view: although all the main characters in this book are female, they are never defined by their femininity. It's just not seen as relevant information, and I love that!
Profile Image for Debbie Lamb.
328 reviews19 followers
August 29, 2017
I really felt I was in a random sock drawer trying to pair them. There are some beautiful lines of prose but that doesn't make up for me feeling completely adrift trying to anchor to something.
Profile Image for verbava.
1,086 reviews148 followers
December 3, 2018
це не роман, але й не зовсім збірка оповідань: тексти, об'єднані головною героїнею, складаються в історію, розтягнуту на кілька десятиліть.

ось вона дівчинка, яка чекає народження сестри і спостерігає за мамою (I couldn't understand why she'd chosen to do what she'd done - why she'd turned herself into this listless, bloated version of herself, thus changing the future - my future - into something shadow-filled and uncertain. I thought she'd done it on purpose. It didn't occur to me that she might have been ambushed);
ось вона проблемний підліток, а трошки далі – непримітна молода жінка з поривами до філології;
ось вона жінка, досі молода й не дуже примітна, але тепер із багажем із коханого чоловіка, його колишньої дружини й ферми (Once in a while, a gizzard - squirrel, Nell suspected - or else a tail, or some other chewed-up body-part offering, would appear on the back-door threshold, where Nell would be sure to step on it, especially if her feet happened to be bare, as they often were in summer. The cats had a vestigial memory of civilization and its rituals, it seemed. They knew they were supposed to pay rent, but they were confused about the details.);
ось вона дивиться, як гасне її мама, і розуміє, що сама вже підійшла впритул до старості.

і все це трошки ретроспективне, а тому спокійне, світле й повне любові, навіть коли самі історії обурюють чи болять. така, знаєте, класично прекрасна етвуд.
Profile Image for Holley Rubinsky.
Author 4 books12 followers
February 9, 2015
Published in 2006, the stories in Moral Disorder must be Margaret Atwood's fictional autobiography of her childhood. I loved this book when I realized that this recollection of experiences was her take on that part of her life. Atwood these days can seem very remote, a distant star, yet these stories take the reader into the heart and, even more exciting, the mind and insights of a bright, bright child. Her character, unnamed in the intimate first-person narratives, writes at the end of the captivating highschool-age story "My Last Duchess" (dissection of a poem by Robert Browning): "Very soon I would a last-year's student. I would be gone from Miss Bessie's world, and she would be gone from mine. Both of us would be in the past, both of us over and done with — me from her point of view, her from mine. Sitting at my present-day desk there would be another, younger student who would be poked and prodded and herded relentlessly through the prescribed texts, as I had been. The first line of a poem is very important, class, Miss Bessie would say. It sets the tone. Let us proceed.
"Meanwhile, I myself, would be inside the dark tunnel. I'd be going on. I'd be finding things out. I'd be all on my own."

The dialogue between the narrative and her boyfriend, Bill is priceless, as they argue about the poem. They have decided that the Count bumped her off. "I was not defending him," I said.
"Yeah. You were. She was a nice normal girl with a sick jerk for a husband, and you seem to think it was her own fault."
I hadn't said that, but it was partly true. ..."

After the childhood stories, the character Nell appears to tell the young adult stories, the married stories, the death of father and mother. I know just enough about Atwood's upbringing -- her father, the entymologist -- to think that "Boys in the Lab" and "The Labrador Fiasco" are set in territory that Atwood knew. The stories of the old people in Nell's life are tender and ring so true they hurt.

At the end of the story "The Entities", Atwood writes: "But what else could I do with all that? thinks Nell, wending her way back to her own house. All that anxiety and anger, those dubious intentions, those tangled lives, that blood. I can tell about it or I can bury it. In the end, we'll all become stories. Or else we'll become entities. Maybe it's the same." What a writer.


Profile Image for Marissa.
288 reviews61 followers
March 4, 2008
Margaret Atwood is of course, as we all know, awesome sauce. This was definitely a work in a different vein than her science fiction stuff, but it has the same dark, menacing tone that she does so well. You can feel her subconscious twisting these stories out, which are unsettlingly mundane. The book reminded me about the vague, intuitive terror of adulthood and the passing of time that I feel the edge of almost all the time these days. Here's a quote:

"I would have to go into the tunnel whether I wanted to or not - the tunnel was the road of going on, and there was more of the road on the other side of it - but the entrance was where [my teacher] had to stop. Inside the tunnel was what I was meant to learn"

Here's another quote:

"That image - of a little child being suffocated, or almost suffocated, by others who thought the whole thing was a game - melded with the furtive nocturnal slugs, and my solitary pacing and singing, and the separate, claustrophobic stairway, and the charmless abstract painting, and the gold-framed mirror, and the slithery green satin bedspread, and became inseperable from them. It wasn't a cheerful composite. As a memory, it is more like a fog bank than a sunlit meadow.

Yet I think of that period as having been a happy time in my life.

Happy is the wrong word. Important."
Profile Image for Mike.
Author 23 books2 followers
December 10, 2009
This book should have been subtitled: "Sh!t happens."

A collection of short stories about a woman from childhood to old age, this book touches into Nell's life at odd, disjointed moments, usually as she is going through the worst periods of her life. Dealing with fear, pain, anxiety, depression, sickness, we miss out on all the good moments of falling in love and joy. Without that connective tissue, it's hard to care what happens to her.

Which is not to say that it is without merit. Atwood is a distinguished writer, and her writing is strong and in many places, filled with ironic and horrifying humor. And one story, about her as a teenager, dissecting a poem and applying her conclusions to her own life, to predict the nontraditional path she's going to follow, was an amazing read.

So, take this one as a bit of a hit and miss.
Profile Image for Aleksandra S..
124 reviews46 followers
May 28, 2020
Zamislite jedan lavirint priča: one se ukrštaju, stvaraju puteve i puteljke, navodeći vas da mislite da lako možete pronaći put iz lavirinta, ali, zapravo, to nije tako. Nalik stvarnom životu, većina tih puteva završi slepom uličicom ili, prosto, ti putevi ostaju nezavršeni, bivaju napušteni usled prekinutih odnosa, postavljenih prioriteta, promenjenih životnih ciljeva...

Ova knjiga predstavlja zbirčicu (stvarno, mogla je malo duža biti) kratkih priča dok je, sa druge strane, ovo niz portreta jedne osobe. Dakle, iako biste možda želeli, ne biste ih mogli "čitati" bez nekog reda. U pitanju je hronika života Nel, žene koja ima jako "klimav" odnos sa roditeljima i sestru koja je po svim načelima izuzetno krhka osoba. U vezi je sa Tigom, ocem dva dečaka koji ima jako komplikovan odnos sa svojom bivšom dragom.

U samoj knjizi nije naznačeno da svaka od ovih jedanaest priča ima istu protagonistkinju, zato što su prve priče ispričane u prvom licu i, pripovedač jeste žena, ali joj imena ne znamo; potom slede priče o Nel i Tigu, da bi se knjiga završila pripovedanjem u prvom licu. Zbirka jeste nekako mračna, ali je u isto vreme i topla i duhovita: to je Atvudova - svojim jedinstvenim stilom ume da iznenadi, šokira, a onda razveseli svoje čitaoce.

"Moralni poremećaj" jeste poglavlje koje jasno definiše Nelin sklop ličnosti, kao i njen kompromitujući život na farmi koju kupuje sa svojom srodnom dušom. Moram da dodam, to mi je i najdraža priča iz ove zbirke. Zajedno sa Lili, agentom za nekretnine, oni čine jezgro svih priča kojima nas je Atvudova počastila.

Svemu tome dodajte indijance, dečake iz laboratorije, odbačeno jagnje, više nego interesantne susede na farmi i dobićete knjigu o čitanju i pričanju priča. I sama autorka najviše voli priče o sebi i svojoj mladosti, jer je upravo one čine živom. A čemu drugo priče i služe, no da sačuvaju ono nešto od zaborava, od životnog raspadanja?

"Mogu da pričam tu priču, ili da je zakopam. Na kraju, svi se pretvaramo u priče. Ili u bića. Možda je to isto.“
Profile Image for Orbi Alter .
234 reviews52 followers
May 29, 2017
Predivna zbirka kratkih realističnih priča. Premda relativno novija zbirka, podsjeća na najraniju Atwood, kad još nije ulazila u spekulativnu fikciju... Cijela zbirka se vrti oko protagonistice Nell ili ljudi koji su vrlo značajni za njezin život. Inače Atwood doživljavam kao savršenstvo stila i izraza koja posjeduje predivan talent da u malo riječi kaže jako puno, a jako je glasna i između redova, kad nešto namjerno prešućuje... I taj njezin predivan način kojim u jednoj rečenici da potpuno novi ton čitavoj priči, na taj trik uvijek emocionalno nasjednem. Zbirka je meditativna i ne slijedi kronologiju vremena, a svaka opisuje jedan događaj ili crticu iz života i zapanjujuće je kako može u potpunom antiklimaksu i naizgled nedostatku ikakve stvarne drame iz svojih čitatelja i čitateljica izvući srce, dušu i poigrati se cijelim spektrom emocija. Tako te nekako slomi, al na jako nježan i topal način. Koliko god da me puta osvojila, uvijek postavi ljestvicu više. I ne mogu reći da su me sve priče oduševile jer bih lagala, ali Bad news, The other place, naslovna Moral Disorder, White horse, The entities i The Labrador fiasco svakako jesu i daju nekako podmuklo snažan ton ostalim, na prvu, slabijim pričama. Sve skupa je za zagrlit knjigicu <3
3 reviews2 followers
July 31, 2011
Atwood has a beautiful way of describing life and its experiences so accurately. On the first page she writes,

"I think of bad news as a huge bird, with the wings of a crow and the face of my Grade Four school teacher, sparse bun, rancid teeth, wrinkly frown, pursed mouth and all, sailing around the world under cover of darkness pleased to be the bearer of ill tidings, carrying a basket of rotten eggs, and knowing- as the sun comes up- exactly where to drop them. On me, for one."

I am amazed that she can make connections to such distant ideas in her writing while keeping a logical flow. I wanted to read this book because I am familiar with Atwood's poetry, but didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. It depicts the life of Nell through short stories- childhood through adulthood. I loved the first half of the book, (childhood- young adulthood) but wasn't too interested in the second half of Nell's life. If you want to read a great book about a girl growing up, I suggest A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Profile Image for Tina.
77 reviews9 followers
January 8, 2018
I'm disappointed, Margaret.

I have a love-hate relationship with this book. Parts are great - the parts that are consistent, but then the inconsistencies that surround those parts annoy the heck out of me. It's first person, third person, and first person again. Pick a "person" and stick with "them," would ya? Then there were the varying tenses, which I won't even go into... but they ARE there.

The main character bugged me, especially when speaking of her dealings with Tig, Oona, and Tig + Oona. Grow a backbone, already!

With that being said, Margaret Atwood still writes consistently well, even when she can't seem to decide on point-of-view, tense, and whether or not the stories ought to be interconnected, or just indiscriminately placed together. For that reason, this book gets a 3.

Profile Image for Kate.
349 reviews84 followers
November 22, 2013
What a wonderful read! If you haven't noticed, I've been on a bit of an Atwood kick lately, and while this one is very different than her dystopian novels I've been reading, I absolutely LOVE getting lost in the lush prose word forests of such an incredible mind.

This short story collection features snippets of one woman's life told in marvelous details that skip across time, just like memories do. However, they also fit together and tell a larger story: one of being incredibly human, full of loss, doubts, happiness, and transformation.

An incredible short story collection that I am happy to have read and will probably revisit from time to time in the future.
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