In the last section, however, Tig has passed away, and Nell’s own body has slowed down noticeably. In this section, Nell is able to look forward to new experiences while she reflects on the more dramatic incidents in their lives: earlier injuries, the loss of friends and her beloved cat. Their children have moved out, they’re considering retirement, and they are beginning to notice the wobbles of age in themselves and others. In the earliest stories in the collection, Nell and Tig are at the upper end of middle age.
Unlike many of Atwood’s more famous works, Nell and Tig’s stories are all introspective pieces that look back at the couple’s life together.
One couple, Nell and Tig, dominate two of the three parts. The semi-linked collection of short stories, some of which have been published before, is split into three parts and largely revolves around loss and aging. Old Babes in the Wood falls somewhere between a sweater and a set of matched mittens. And if you really have a lot less, you can only make mittens.” And after decades of studying the craft of writing, she instinctively knows how a story is going to evolve. “It’s like you’ve got this much wool, and you can make a sweater out of it. I was curious how Atwood - with work published across so many genres and mediums - decides whether an idea should be a novel or a short story. But she’s been writing across several genres and a half dozen mediums since the ’60s, and her newest collection of short stories, titled Old Babes in the Wood, is a great reminder of her mastery of intimate, realistic literary fiction. “My mother said, ‘No, no, that’s too much!’”Īt 83, the prolific author makes the same protest when I talk about something 20 years in the future: “Too much!” But Atwood is keeping plenty busy writing, traveling, and dreaming about our collective future.Ītwood has been declared a “prophet of dystopia,” becoming revered for her speculative sagas The Handmaid’s Tale and the MaddAddam trilogy. But when one of the missionaries asked the Heavenly Father to “please grant Margaret and Carl another 50 years of married bliss,” Margaret Atwood, senior, cut in. The elder Atwoods listened politely before thanking the young men and agreeing to a prayer. “Mum and dad loved to have people in and listen to what they had to say,” she says on a call from her office in Toronto. Once when Margaret Atwood was young, her parents invited eager Mormon missionaries into their home (a scenario that seems all but foreign to us now).
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