Lots of VERY short but thought-provoking pieces. They are varied, though many involve common Atwood themes (relationships, environmental catastrophe, heaven and hell, women). Some are quite poetic and a few are actual poems; there is an allegorical riddle, or perhaps it's a riddling allegory. There are also a few faux-naive woodcut illustrations.You could easily read the whole thing in an hour or two, but you'd probably feel sea-sick and you really wouldn't appreciate them. Because they are so brief, you still have the taste of the previous one, and just as you "get" the one you are now reading, it ends. So dip in and out.This review will echo the bitty nature of the book.The collection opens with an exploration of memory, and the temptation to edit one's personal history.A singer describes "my voice attached like an invisible vampire to my throat".The frustration of endlessly being photographed is explained, though whether by a celebrity or someone in a pre-industrial society is not clear: "No more photos... shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper... I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves."The next one is more raw: examining the negative ideas, and fears some people have about orphans, and the nasty things they say and do as a consequence. "It is loss to which everything flows, absence in which everything flowers. It is you, not we, who have always been the children of the gods." Ouch.There is humour, especially "Resources of the Ikarians". A self-deprecating islander discusses the community's attempts to raise foreign income. "The child sex trade is not for us" (phew), but only because "our children are unattractive and rude"! A parody of Chicken Little's fears about the sky falling is very good, too.A longer item is actually a poem, and although it starts with a bear rejecting the name applied to his species by humans, it progresses to the unravelling of almost everything - a similar trick to Martin Amis' "Time's Arrow" (review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...)"Three novels I won't write soon" is an intriguing title, and the three plot summaries are good pastiches of Atwood's own themes and styles. The real trick is that one can ALMOST (but only almost) imagine her actually writing them.The repeating pattern of a children's story is used to great effect in "Take Charge". The nursery/liturgical familiarity contrasts sharply with the more dystopian subject. Atwood is often portrayed as a feminist writer, and although she clearly has strong views on feminist matters, that label can sound off-putting. One piece here exposes these ideas in a powerful but also funny and sad way: it starts with a (presumably modern) narrator longing for a traditional housewife-cum-mother, but it ends pointedly, "and we can be careless again... and ignore you as we used to".The item that lends its title to the collection is near the end. It cleverly describes the compulsion to convert the world around into words, whilst staying separate from it.
I'm a fan of Margaret Atwood. I wasn't sure what to expect of this book. While the cover claims it's a collection of essays, this book is more like a collection of impressions that aren't formulated into what we may traditionally know of as a narrative (although there are narrative voices)... while at the same time, the collection doesn't make as much a thesis-point as the traditional anglo-saxon epistemic essay structure. So it's a little difficult for me to write a review in that sense. I think of this collection more like a palette of colors, or swatch patterns to be saved for future use... most of the ideas in here are of interest, but they don't connect anywhere and don't seem to be easily collated into a single narrative impulse.If you're looking to be receptive to subtle emotions, and you want to read something without taxing yourself too much, I think this is a good book to read. Since I tend to dive deeply into whatever I read -- and try to find how this text allows me to orient myself more or less in the world I already exist in -- it was difficult for me to read this book. Despite it's slim size, I took forever working through it.I wouldn't say that the descriptions are misleading, but my expectations were definitely not in line with what I read. From glancing at the other reviews, I am in the minority on this one.
What do You think about The Tent (2006)?
I'm working on my life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart. It's mostly a question of editing. (4)______________Fish are not the rival of stones. (17)______________No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves. Turn the page: you, looking, are newly confused. You know me too well to know me. Or not too well: too much. (25, from No More Photos)
—Iso Cambia
To Margaret Atwood: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I've long been a fan of Margaret Atwood, ever since I read The Handmaid's Tale, one of the most frightening books I've ever read. Then she did a reading of 'Oryx and Crake' at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver which I attended. I was on crutches at the time with a broken ankle, and she was charm personified, and suggested I find a cat to purr over my ankle.The blurb on the front of 'The Tent' (from the Sunday Times) says: Atwood is one of the most inventive, enthralling and accomplished authors writing in English.I can't disagree with that.'The Tent' is simply wonderful. Is it a short story collection or fictional essays? A mixture of both, with some poetry thrown in. Each story is only a couple of pages long, but crikey, they pack a punch. The stories have dark hearts and humor, snippets and fragments of words dryly written, words that twist, slippery in the telling, and hit you in the brain and the heart even as they end and the page turns white. Favorite stories in this volume: Orphan Stories, Our Cat Enters Heaven, Three Novels I Won't Write Soon, Post Colonial (resonated strongly with this Aussie), Warlords, The Tent, and But It Could Still.If I could say half as much as Margaret Atwood in twice the number of words I would die happy.
—Cheyenne Blue
For the record, this is the first time I've actually finished a Margaret Atwood book. I've tried 3 times, 3 separate books, over the last 15 years to read her. I always find her books incredibly intriguing, but then I always for some reason lose interest (The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin) or get frustrated with her writing style (The Handmaid's Tale). But I'm obviously in the minority here - many people I know whose opinions I respect and honor LOVE Margaret Atwood and probably think I'm nuts.So I hovered between 2 & 3 stars for this book, mostly because I had an "a-ha!" moment at the end really tied the book together for me as a cohesive narrative, rather than just these seemingly random stories, anecdotes, poems, and jokes. She starts the book with a notion of abandoning the idea of a life story. Of not writing about your childhood, etc., and freeing yourself of those details to get to the essence of a self-portrait - a brain-portrait, if you will. And then she ends the books with the story of a writer in a paper tent in the middle of the wilderness surrounded by red-eyed beasts. The writer writes obsessively on the walls of the paper tent as a form of comfort and protection, and when the paper tent burns down, the writer keeps on writing "because what else can you do?"So I think that this book, in a way, is a life story of Margaret Atwood. This book is her paper tent, and we're being given a portal into her mind as her own self portrait. But then maybe I'm reaching...I liked a few of the stories - particularly "Chicken Little Goes too Far" and "Horatio's Version" - but some of them I just found so frustratingly enigmatic. She has this habit of writing in the 2nd person that I find incredibly annoying. And she's witty, but in a cute way. I appreciate wit. I worship Dorothy Parker. But when Dorothy Parker writes down a witty phrase, she then can stare back up at you with a straight face. When Margaret Atwood writes down a witty phrase, she then curls her head up with a self-satisfied smirk and winks. That's my opinion, anyway.It's worth reading though. I haven't disliked a book and yet respected it so much in a while.
—Ryan
