TITLE: The Tent
AUTHOR: Margaret Atwood
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury ( March 2006)
ISBN: 0 7475 8225 4 PRICE: $29.95 (hardback) 155 pages
Reviewed by Ann Skea (ann@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
).
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This book was not at all what I expected. I can't remember what I had read
about it, but I was looking forward to enjoying another collection of
Margaret
Atwood's short stories, like Wilderness Tips or Bluebeard's Egg. Instead,
this
is a collection of brief flights of imagination which are, as the media
release
says "smart and entertaining fictional essays...chilling and witty,
prescient
and personal, delectable and tart."
There is no doubt of Margaret Atwood's inventiveness and skill, and
individually many of these pieces are very funny. However, this is a book
to be
taken in small doses, because the ***ulative effect is brittle, joyless
and
decidedly uncomfortable.
One piece, 'Voice', describes the writer's impression that her artistic
'voice'
is attached to her like "the translucent greenish membrane" which balloons
our
of "a frog in full trill"; and Atwood's accompanying drawing shows it as
plant-like tendrils on which a small heart blooms. It is an interesting
conceit, but this writer's 'voice' threatens to take over her life. It
becomes
her public persona - it is the voice people want, not her. Margaret
Atwood's
'voice' is certainly strong and distinctive throughout this book, but is
it her
only voice? Other books would suggest not. And even if it is, does she not
have
a choice about that? Perhaps the attractions of being wanted for that
public
voice outweigh the disadvantages. As the writer in this particular piece
notes,
she and her voice sit in a hotel suite, rather than just a hotel room,
"because
it's still nothing but the best for us".
It is a pity that the title piece of this book, 'The Tent', is placed so
near
the end, because only after I had read it did the framework for all the
pieces
in the book become clear; and only then, too, did the words and shapes on
the
distinctive red and black cover ("designed by Atwood and Wood") have some
meaning. The tent of this short story is a fragile shelter, a place to
which
"you" retreat from the threatening demons of a hostile world. As a sort of
magical protective ritual, you must write constantly on the paper walls of
your
tent in order to protect your loved ones and to keep the demons at bay.
The
parallel with what any writer does when they retreat into their paper
world and
erect barriers of words is clear; and that most of the pieces in this book
deal
with various ills is also clear; but by using the impersonal 'you' Atwood
includes us in this story. Perhaps if I had read this piece first I would
have
found the whole book less disturbing. But it is more likely that it was
Atwood's intention to disturb the reader. Certainly the world she
describes in
this book is our world, and the demons are our demons.
Margaret Atwood has always been concerned with the demons which threaten
our
world but her early warning system is never polemic - she never harangues
us.
Instead, she makes imaginative extrapolations from things which she sees
already happening, and suggests what the outcome might be if we do nothing
to
stop it. So, The Handmaid's Tale was like an early warning to women of the
dangers of letting men control technological development. And Oryx and
Crake
was her most recent vision of the possible future of our brave new world,
its
bleak outlook well tempered with ironic humour.
There is still plenty of this humour in The Tent, but the overall mood is
darker and less optimistic. The final two stories in the book appear to
offer a
lifeline - a baby survives a cataclysmic disaster in a treetop; a bulb is
planted in the dirt from which new life may come - but this lifeline is so
fragile and comes so late that by the time it is thrown the world may seem
to
be so drowned in mud that you will already have given up hope and accepted
your
fate. That, however, is not Margaret Atwood's way.
Many of the pieces in The Tent have been published before, in small
magazines;
in journals; as limited editions; and as part of fund raising schemes for
disaster relief groups or wildlife funds. Collected together in a book
like
this they are likely to find a larger, more diverse, reader****p. The Tent
may
not be what many readers expect, or want, of Margaret Atwood's 'voice',
and it
may not change the world, but at least she is doing what the increasingly
desperate leaders of 'Take Charge' command: "Well", they say as imminent
disaster seems unavoidable "do the best you can". And Margaret Atwood's
best is
always worth reading.
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Copyright © Ann Skea 2005
http://ann.skea.com
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