Moral Disorder

This book of 11 linked short stories, with it inevitable episodic quality, captures that sense we sometimes have of life being a series of crises and peak experiences, separated by stretches of seeming ordinariness. The incidents come from the life of a woman named Nell over a sixty-year span. On the whole, the stories rely more on the richness of the narrative voice (not always first person) than on the immediacy of dramatized scenes. Susan Denaker's reading shows a good understanding of this trait. Her careful pace facilitates the listener's comprehension of Atwood's prose, and her clear, intelligent narration accords well with this thoughtful, emotionally rich book. G.H. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

July 24, 2006
An intriguing patchwork of poignant episodes, Atwood's latest set of stories (after The Tent
) chronicles 60 years of a Canadian family, from postwar Toronto to a farm in the present. The opening piece of this novel-in-stories is set in the present and introduces Tig and Nell, married, elderly and facing an uncertain future in a world that has become foreign and hostile. From there, the book casts back to an 11-year-old Nell excitedly knitting garments for her as yet unborn sister, Lizzie, and continues to trace her adolescence and young adulthood; Nell rebels against the stern conventions of her mother's Toronto household, only to rush back home at 28 to help her family deal with Lizzie's schizophrenia. After carving out a "medium-sized niche" as a freelance book editor, Nell meets Oona, a writer, who is bored with her marriage to Tig. Oona has been searching for someone to fill "the position of second wife," and she introduces Nell to Tig. Later in life, Nell takes care of her once vital but now ravaged-by-age parents. Though the episodic approach has its disjointed moments, Atwood provides a memorable mosaic of domestic pain and the surface tension of a troubled family.