Bluebeard's Egg: Stories - Softcover

Atwood, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385491042 ISBN 13: 9780385491044

Publisher: Anchor, 1998

Synopsis

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale

By turns humorous and warm, stark and poignant, the stories in Bluebeard’s Egg probe childhood memories, the reality of parents growing old, and the casual cruelty men and women can inflict on one another. A tenuous teenage love affair fails to survive a hurricane; a man notices the women around him becoming progressively paler and smaller; a surgeon who specializes in hearts seems oddly emotionally opaque to his wife; a middle-aged couple’s waning affection rekindles at the spectacle of rare Jamaican birds. In these exceptional short stories, Margaret Atwood proves herself once again a true master of the form.

About this title

From the Publisher

"A champion of Canadian literature...A startlingly original voice."
--Washington Post Book World

"Atwood appears to challenge both her readers and the outside limits of her own talent...Writing at top form, writing with total control of her material, with sureness, with touches of brilliance...Bluebeard's Egg is a book to be read and re-read, to be talked about and savored."
--London (Ontario) Free Press

"Margaret Atwood conceals the kick of a perfum bottle converted into a Molotov cocktail."
--Melvin Maddocks

"Atwood's prose in Bluebeard's Egg is powerful, elegant and mellifluous to an extraordinary degree."
--Quill and Quire

From the Back Cover

“A book to be read and re-read, to be talked about and savored.”
– London Free Press

“Margaret Atwood renders visual, aural, and tactile events in such crisp, surprising language that her images crackle off the page.”
– Washington Post

“The depth and complexity of Atwood's critique of contemporary society are stunning.”
– Ms.

“Her stories are sophisticated, reticent, ornate, stark, supple, stiff, savage or forgiving; they are exactly what she wants them to be. They are stories from the prime of life.”
– Times Literary Supplement

“An outstanding correspondent on the war between the sexes writes as wittily as ever on the hopes and shortcomings of women who bake for poets, sleep with their accountants, attribute their preference for awful men to fearlessness, and don't know how much they scare their own mothers.”
– The Observer (U.K.)

“Atwood displays polished craftsmanship and rare insight in the stories in this collection. They are the work of an author in full control of her considerable talents.”
– Globe and Mail

“This collection of short stories shows her genius with all its sparkle and humour.”
– Cosmopolitan

“Atwood is nothing if not clairvoyant.”
–Kingston Whig-Standard

“Once again Atwood brings her poetic talents, her acute clarity of perception, and her sardonic humour to an examination of the foibles and follies of modern life.”
–David Staines, Canadian Literature

“In this impressive collection of astute and reverberating stories, she adds to her already considerable stature as a writer.”
– Winnipeg Free Press

“Atwood's prose in Bluebeard’s Egg is powerful, elegant, and mellifluous to an extraordinary degree.”
– Quill & Quire

“An acute and poetic observer of the eternal, universal, rum relationships between men and women.”
– The Times (U.K.)

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0385491042
• ISBN 13: 9780385491044
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256