Old Babes in the Wood
Stories
(Sprache: Englisch)
"In this collection comprised of fifteen ... stories, ... Atwood speaks to our times with her characteristic wit and intellect. Of special significance are the seven works revolving around the long-term married couple Tig and Nell. Acting as bookends for...
lieferbar
versandkostenfrei
Buch (Gebunden)
24.00 €
- Lastschrift, Kreditkarte, Paypal, Rechnung
- Kostenlose Rücksendung
Produktdetails
Produktinformationen zu „Old Babes in the Wood “
Klappentext zu „Old Babes in the Wood “
"In this collection comprised of fifteen ... stories, ... Atwood speaks to our times with her characteristic wit and intellect. Of special significance are the seven works revolving around the long-term married couple Tig and Nell. Acting as bookends for the collection, these stories look deeply in the heart of what it means to spend a life together, with the four stories in Part I relating tales from their married life, and the three stories at the end showing Nell's reality in the aftermath of Tig's death. In other works, two sisters grapple with loss and memory; ... 'Impatient Griselda' reprises the folkloric role of Griselda in Bocaccio's The Decameron, exploring alienation and miscommunication; and 'Evil Mother' [touches] on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch"--
Lese-Probe zu „Old Babes in the Wood “
Chapter 1i
TIG & NELL
first aid
Nell came home one day just before dinnertime and found the front door open. The car was gone. There was a trail of blood splotches on the steps, and once she was inside the house, she followed it along the hall carpet and into the kitchen. There was a knife on the cutting board, one of Tig s favourites, Japanese steel, very sharp and beside it, a bloodstained carrot, one end severed. Their daughter, nine at the time, was nowhere to be found.
What were the possible scenarios? Desperadoes had broken in. Tig had tried to defend himself against them, using the knife (though how to explain the carrot?), and had been wounded. The desperadoes had made off with him, their daughter, and their car. Nell should call the police.
Or else Tig had been cooking, had sliced himself with the knife, had judged that he needed stitches, and had driven himself to the hospital, taking their daughter with him to avoid leaving her by herself. This was more likely. He must have been in too much of a hurry to leave a note.
Nell got out the bottle of carpet cleaner and sprayed the blood spots: they would be much harder to get out once they d dried. Then she wiped the blood off the kitchen floor and, after a pause, off the carrot. It was a perfectly good carrot; no need for it to go to waste.
Time passed. Suspense built. She was at the point of phoning all the hospitals in the vicinity to see if Tig was there when he came back, hand bandaged. He was in a jovial mood, as was their daughter. What an adventure they d had! The blood was just pouring out, they reported. The tea towel Tig had used for wrapping the cut had been soaked! Yes, driving had been a challenge, said Tig he didn t say dangerous but who could wait for a taxi, and he d managed all right with basically just one hand since he d needed to keep the other one raised, and the blood was trickling off his elbow, and they d sewn him up quickly at the hospital because he was
... mehr
dripping all over everything, and anyway, here they were! Luckily not an artery, or it would be a different story. (It was indeed a different story when Tig told it a little later, to Nell: his bravado had been an act he hadn t wanted to frighten their daughter and he d been worried that he would pass out if the blood loss got out of control, and then what?)
I need a drink, said Tig.
So do I, said Nell. We can have scrambled eggs. Whatever Tig had been planning to do with the carrot was no longer on the agenda.
The tea towel had been brought back in a plastic bag. It was bright red but beginning to brown at the edges. Nell put it to soak in cold water, which was the best way to deal with bloodstained fabrics.
But what would I have done if I d been here? she wondered. Not a Band-Aid: insufficient. A tourniquet? She d had perfunctory instruction in those at Girl Guides. They d done wrist sprains too. Minor emergencies were her domain, but not major ones. Major ones were Tig s.
That was some time ago. Early autumn, as she recalls, a year in the later 1980s. There were personal computers then, of a lumbering kind. And printers: the paper for them came with the pages joined together at top and bottom, and had holes along the sides, in perforated strips that you had to tear off. No cellphones though, which was why Nell hadn t been able to text or call Tig and ask him where he was, and also what had caused the blood?
How much waiting we used to do, she thinks. Waiting without knowing. So many blanks we couldn t fill in, so many mysteries. So little information. Now it s the first decade of the twenty-first century, space-time is denser, it s crowded, you can barely move because the air is so packed with this and that. You c
I need a drink, said Tig.
So do I, said Nell. We can have scrambled eggs. Whatever Tig had been planning to do with the carrot was no longer on the agenda.
The tea towel had been brought back in a plastic bag. It was bright red but beginning to brown at the edges. Nell put it to soak in cold water, which was the best way to deal with bloodstained fabrics.
But what would I have done if I d been here? she wondered. Not a Band-Aid: insufficient. A tourniquet? She d had perfunctory instruction in those at Girl Guides. They d done wrist sprains too. Minor emergencies were her domain, but not major ones. Major ones were Tig s.
That was some time ago. Early autumn, as she recalls, a year in the later 1980s. There were personal computers then, of a lumbering kind. And printers: the paper for them came with the pages joined together at top and bottom, and had holes along the sides, in perforated strips that you had to tear off. No cellphones though, which was why Nell hadn t been able to text or call Tig and ask him where he was, and also what had caused the blood?
How much waiting we used to do, she thinks. Waiting without knowing. So many blanks we couldn t fill in, so many mysteries. So little information. Now it s the first decade of the twenty-first century, space-time is denser, it s crowded, you can barely move because the air is so packed with this and that. You c
... weniger
Autoren-Porträt von Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade.Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Margaret Atwood
- 2023, 272 Seiten, Maße: 16,7 x 24,6 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Doubleday
- ISBN-10: 0385549075
- ISBN-13: 9780385549073
- Erscheinungsdatum: 03.03.2023
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
There are authors we turn to because they can uncannily predict our future; there are authors we need for their skillful diagnosis of our present; and there are authors we love because they can explain our past. And then there are the outliers: those who gift us with timelines other than the one we re stuck in, realities far from home. If anyone has proved, over the course of a long and wildly diverse career, that she can be all four, it s Margaret Atwood. Long may she reign...If you consider yourself an Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You ve been missing out. Rebecca Makkai, New York Times Book Review
Old Babes in the Wood is touching, smart, funny, and unique in equal measure A dazzling mixture of stories that explore what it means to be human while also showcasing Atwood's gifted imagination and great sense of humor.
NPR
These fifteen stories are a master class in how to write, a rollicking good time, and a deep exploration of human relationships the damage we do to each other and the ways we come together. Delving into Atwood s work feels a bit like coming home you can trust her to tell a good story and not make any gaffes along the way.
Brooklyn Rail
"Atwood explores love and loss in this brilliant collection that mixes fantastical stories about the afterlife with realism...She s writing at the top of her considerable powers here."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The celebrated author s first collection of short fiction since Stone Mattress (2014)...Honest and artful depictions of aging and loss."
Kirkus
Kommentar zu "Old Babes in the Wood"
Schreiben Sie einen Kommentar zu "Old Babes in the Wood".
Kommentar verfassen