Autumnal rustling

Margaret Atwood is fond of repeating the adage that creative writing is ‘10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration’. The same can be said of reading Atwood’s latest story collection, Old Babes in the Wood. When a writer is so venerated, there is a risk of both authorial and editorial complacency. The book’s back cover features this excerpt: ‘My heart is broken, Nell thinks. But in our family we don’t say, “My heart is broken.” We say, “Are there any cookies?”’ This reminded me of one of those film trailers where you wonder: if these gags made the promo, how bland is the rest? If a story collection is like a box of cookies, I’m afraid these are mostly half-baked (if not a little stale and crumbly).

The fifteen stories are grouped into three sections: ‘Tig & Nell’, ‘My Evil Mother’, and ‘Nell & Tig’. The Tig and Nell stories afford glimpses of a long, loving marriage, mostly through the recollections of the widowed Nell. Nell seems likeable enough, and Tig’s harmless eccentricities might prove endearing on closer acquaintance, but they fail to generate enough energy to animate the sequence as a living whole. Perhaps it’s because Atwood is writing from personal experience: in fictionalising her feelings about the loss of her life partner Graeme Gibson, is she holding back?

According to her agent, Karolina Sutton, Atwood’s mastery of her craft leaves editors with little to do. ‘Her editors are basically her publishers,’ Sutton boasts. From the overall conception of some stories down to individual sentences, this hands-off approach looks misguided. Here is Nell getting over her fears about campsite moose attacks: ‘In the clear light of morning, the moose-squashing possibility seemed remote. Not a life-threatening experience, therefore, except in Nell’s head.’ The expression is somehow both matter of fact and ungainly.