I have really enjoyed many of Margaret Atwood’s writings: fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. I have read several collections of her short stories, and although there are always or two stories that I really enjoy and may even blow me away, many of her short stories just don’t satisfy me.

This collection was the same. I loved the short story Morte de Smudge where the writer is rewriting Tennyson’s Morte de Arthur as on ode to her cat that recently died. This one has a stunning twisty ending.

Although there are fifteen stories altogether, Mort de Smudge is actually the first of seven interconnected stories of married couple Nell and Tig as they age. The last one, bearing the name of the book, involves cleaning out their summer cottage during the last visit there.

Perhaps I’ve had too much loss in my own life, losing both my mother and father in the last few years, as well as starting my own sorting of life’s accumulations. But this whole sequence just seemed overwhelmingly sad to me – which definitely speaks to Ms Atwood’s proficiency as a writer, but struck me as so sad, I wouldn’t want to reread these.

On the other hand, I did enjoy the totally unrelated My Evil Mother which I saw released as a free download recently. ( )

Although I often say I don't really like short stories, there are some authors for which I make an exception. Margaret Atwood is certainly one of those.
I really enjoyed this collection of stories that she wrote after her life partner, Graeme Gibson, died. Many of the stories deal with widowhood. There are a number of stories about Tig and Nell, a married couple, mainly told from Nell's point of view. Some of these are sad but Atwood's characteristic humour also shines through. The title story is about Nell and her sister spending a week in the family's cabin and there are some funny bits but it ends with Nell finding a note that Tig wrote which is a plaintive reminder of their life together. The middle section of the book contains stories about other people (and even an alien). My favourite of these was "The Dead Interview" which Atwood narrates herself. In it, Atwood interviews the dead writer, George Orwell, through the services of a medium. I could almost picture this scene although I'm sure Atwood has never consulted a medium. It is very funny especially when Atwood has to explain modern times to Orwell.

In addition to Atwood, there are a number of narrators. Some of the names, like Kimberly Farr and Bahni Turpin, are familiar but the audiobook doesn't reveal who is reading individual stories until the last. Atwood, of course, is unmistakable. ( )

Old Babes in the Wood: Stories by Margaret Atwood is a collection of fifteen short stories that feature a variety of themes and genres. A few of these stories have been published in the past among which are “Impatient Griselda” (featured in The Decameron Project, 2020), the title story “Old Babes in the Woods (published in New Yorker Magazine, April 2021), and the short story “My Evil Mother” (Amazon Original Stories, 2022).

Divided into three segments, Parts I and III (a total of seven stories) feature Nell and Tig, a married couple with the latter segment focusing on an older Nell as she adjusts to being alone after Tig’s demise.

While I did enjoy Atwood’s prose and the range of emotions depicted in the first section, I wasn’t quite as engaged as I was with subsequent sections. My ratings for the stories (with summaries) in the first section are as follows:

“First Aid” (3/5): A domestic mishap triggers Nell’s memories of a time when Nell and Tig were training in First Aid. Nell expresses skepticism on whether they would have reacted differently had they possessed this knowledge in the different risky situations they encountered in the past.
“Two Scorched Men” (2.5/5) revolves around Nell and Tig’s friendship with John, an Irishman, and Francois, both of whom served in the War and whom they met vacationing in the French countryside while renting John’s home.
“Morte de Smudgie” (3.5/5)Nell grieves the loss of their cat Smudgie uniquely, reimagining Tennyson’s “Morte d’Arthur with Smudgie as the central character.

Part II features a collection of stories that vary between dark humor, sci-fi and fantasy and historical fiction.I thoroughly enjoyed this segment which was characterized by exceptional imaginative storytelling as we have come to expect from the author. Themes range from pandemics and dystopian futures, magical realism to friendship, feminism and aging.

“My Evil Mother” (5/5) An ode to complicated mother–daughter relationships, with our teenage protagonist struggling to figure out whether her mother is plain “evil”, practices witchcraft or is just troubled as the years go by.
“The Dead Interview” (5/5)features the author Margaret Atwood in conversation with the late George Orwell with whom she communicates through a friend acting as a medium. One of my favorites in this collection!
Impatient Griselda (4.5/5) introduces us to an alien (closely resembling an octopus) who is in charge of a group of humans in quarantine, while a plague rages outside. The alien decides to engage his charges by telling them the story of “an ancient Earth Story”, “Impatient Griselda”.
“Bad Teeth” (3/5) Two women who have been friends for decades reflect on the ups and downs in their friendship over the years.
“Freeforall” (4/5) takes us into a dystopian future where the population has been ravaged by STDs leading to an increase in the practice of arranged marriages between those deemed to be “pure” facilitated by designated “Houses” led by individuals who are in charge of all procedural formalities relating to the same.

Metempsychosis (5/5) An unfortunate encounter with exterminator results in a snail’s soul jumping directly from snail to human, inhabiting the body of a female bank employee. What follows is how this former snail observes and adjusts to its new life.
Airborne: A Symposium (3/5) A group of aging women, former academics with strong feminist leanings, meet to discuss a project.
“Death By Clamshell” (5/5) : A fictional first-person account of ancient mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria as she shares the details of how she was executed in public while also shedding a light on significant events from her life.

Touching upon themes of marriage, family, aging, loss and grief,the stories in the third section are reflective, insightful, melancholic and nostalgic in tone, emotionally powerful and eloquently penned.

I found the stories “Widows”(5/5) and “Wooden Box”(5/5) particularly moving. The former written in epistolary format wherein Nell is conflicted with how far she should share her true state of mind on being widowed versus writing a perfunctory response to a letter asking after her wellbeing.
“Wooden Box” follows a widowed Nell as she is haunted by memories as she sorts through the house and their belongings.
“A Dusty Lunch”(3/5): We get to know more about Tig’s family, his father in particular when Nell unearths letters and papers Tig had inherited from his late father who served in WWII.

“Old Babes in the Wood” (4/5) : Nell and her sister Lizzie spend time in their family cabin in the woods surrounded by memories of their youth and the days gone by.

Fans of Margaret Atwood would enjoy this collection. For those who have yet to read anything by this author, this would be a great introduction to her range of storytelling. Overall, this is an impressive collection of stories that will appeal to readers with varied tastes and preferences.

Many thanks to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for the much-appreciated digital review copy of this selection of short stories. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. ( )

Page 220 “Wooden Box”Nell props herself up against the counter and opens the book. She’ll read while she’s eating what passes for dinner: a piece of cheese, some leftover soup heated in the microwave, a day-old baked flour specimen that was supposed to be a croissant, cut into slices and browned in the toaster oven.
B Mac {I never was a “ generation student” I always was in a muddle.}

This wildly assorted collection of short stories focuses mostly on growing old, but includes other (very strange) topics. Some of the stories are deeply moving, a few fell flat for me, but the whole is well worth reading. As an old person and a widow, I identified deeply with Atwood's insights about these conditions. ( )