Bluebeard's Egg - Softcover

Atwood, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0771008627 ISBN 13: 9780771008627

Publisher: Emblem Editions, 1999

Synopsis

In this acclaimed collection of twelve stories, Margaret Atwood probes the territory of childhood memories and the casual cruelty men and women inflict upon each other and themselves. She looks behind the familiar world of family summers at remote lakes, ordinary lives, and unexpected loves, and she unearths profound truths. A melancholy, teenage love is swept away by a Canadian hurricane, while a tired, middle-aged affection is rekindled by the spectacle of rare Jamaican birds; a potter tries to come to terms with the group of poets who so smother her that she is driven into the arms of her accountant; and, in the title story, the Bluebeard legend is retold as an ironic tale of marital deception. Stark and scathing at times, humorous and compassionate at others, Bluebeard’s Egg confirms once again Atwood’s reputation as the pre-eminent chronicler of our times.

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction, but is best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1969), The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. A book of short stories called Stone Mattress: Nine Tales was published in 2014. Her novel, MaddAddam (2013), is the final volume in a three-book series that began with the Man-Booker prize-nominated Oryx and Crake (2003) and continued with The Year of the Flood (2009). The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short fiction) both appeared in 2006. A volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, a collection of non-fiction essays appeared in 2011. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth was adapted for the screen in 2012. Ms. Atwood’s work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian.
Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
www.margaretatwood.ca

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.)

Edition details

• Publisher: Emblem Editions
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0771008627
• ISBN 13: 9780771008627
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272