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Moral Disorder: And Other Stories
Unavailable
Moral Disorder: And Other Stories
Unavailable
Moral Disorder: And Other Stories
Audiobook7 hours

Moral Disorder: And Other Stories

Written by Margaret Atwood

Narrated by Susan Denaker

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Atwood triumphs with these dazzling, personal stories in her first collection since Wilderness Tips.

In these ten interrelated stories Atwood traces the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it, while evoking the drama and the humour that colour common experiences - the birth of a baby, divorce and remarriage, old age and death. With settings ranging from Toronto, northern Quebec, and rural Ontario, the stories begin in the present, as a couple no longer young situate themselves in a larger world no longer safe. Then the narrative goes back in time to the forties and moves chronologically forward toward the present.

In "The Art of Cooking and Serving," the twelve-year-old narrator does her best to accommodate the arrival of a baby sister. After she boldly declares her independence, we follow the narrator into young adulthood and then through a complex relationship. In "The Entities," the story of two women haunted by the past unfolds. The magnificent last two stories reveal the heartbreaking old age of parents but circle back again to childhood, to complete the cycle.

By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal, Moral Disorder displays Atwood's celebrated storytelling gifts and unmistakable style to their best advantage. This is vintage Atwood, writing at the height of her powers.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 19, 2006
ISBN9780739340523
Unavailable
Moral Disorder: And Other Stories
Author

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in more than forty-five countries, is the author of over fifty books, including fiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, now an award-winning television series, her works include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; The MaddAddam Trilogy; The Heart Goes Last; Hag-Seed; The Testaments, which won the Booker Prize and was long-listed for the Giller Prize; and the poetry collection Dearly. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in Great Britain for her services to literature. She lives in Toronto.

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Reviews for Moral Disorder

Rating: 3.6405660203773587 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A series of largely autobiographical short stories, featuring the author in old age...caring for frail elderly parents...but also times in her youth: memories of school, leaving home...the complicated early days of her relationship with her husband, when he was a newly separated husband and father; their efforts to run a farm.This is fabulous writing, as even incredibly funny tales have a much deeper resonance. I was struck with "My Last Duchess", where she recalls an English class studying a poem. The light hearted side of teenage school life is set against her increasing awareness that the 'darker side of life' portrayed in the set texts is only too real. "(The teachers) knew something we needed to know, but it was a complicated thing - not so much a thing as a pattern...These women - these teachers - had no direct method of conveying this thing to us, not in a way that would make us listen, because it was too tangled, it was too oblique. It was hidden within the stories."Also "The Boys at the Lab" where the author visits her 90-something mother, blind, bedridden and losing her memory. They talk of events in their past, things so vivid at the time, now so long gone. Only distant recollections and old photographs attest that they ever were:"She had to bend over so she was close to the page: not only was her eyesight failing, so were the photos. They were fading, bleaching out."Wonderful writing as all her books.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Isn’t Margaret Atwood just amazing? I got a little behind on my Project Atwood, but I picked up Moral Disorder at the library and figured I’d just read a short story here and there.But I couldn’t do that. I ended up reading the entire book straight through, which is unusual when it’s a book of short stories. Similar to The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, Moral Disorder is a book of connected short stories.For the full review, visit Love at First Book
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Bad NewsAn older couple go about their morning rituals.The Art of Cooking and ServingAn eleven-year-old becomes responsible for the care of her expecting mother, then much of the baby's care when it's born.The Headless HorsemanWhile driving to visit their ailing mother, two adult sisters reminisce about a Halloween costume the older sister made during their childhood.My Last DuchessA high school couple analyze the poem, The Last Duchess, in preparation for a final exam. The Other PlaceA female adult travels from job to job and place to place. Eventually she settles down and marries Tig.MonopolyTig and Oona decide to live in an open-marriage. Moral DisorderTig and Nell move to another farm. They are excited to grow vegetables and raise animals.White HorseNell's friend gives her and Tig a horse. Lizzie (Nell's sister) comes for a visit when she's not feeling very encouraged about life.The EntitiesWhen they decide to sell the farm and move back to the city, Nell and Tig befriend their real-estate Agent, Lillie.The Labrador FiascoNell goes to her parents' home for a visit.The Boys at the LabAn adult woman is taking care of her 90-year-old, bedridden mother. They reminisce while looking at old pictures.Being that all these short stories were related, I don't understand why they weren't considered a novel. Adding some dates onto the titles would have made it an easier read, because on occasion I had difficulty figuring out exactly what characters were being portrayed. A new scenario was developed for each story and some of them were interesting, but others I wondered why it was chosen as an important piece to the puzzle. Throughout the book, I did experience a range of enjoyment; however, I didn't find anything spectacular. I did discover that I prefer short stories to be just that - short stories, not chapters in disguise. (3/5)Originally posted on: "Thoughts of Joy..."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This series of stories captures periods in the life of Nell from the birth of her younger sister to dealing with the last years of her parents lives. The voice is mature throughout, told in language which has accepted the ambiguities of the past. I was left feeling I wouldn't be able to recognize these individuals involved other than the ex-wife and the real estate agent after ½ an hours conversation, but the language has a hypnotic quality and in the descriptions creates a dreamlike claustrophobic sense of entrapment.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed how the book was character-driven, how each chapter could stand on its own as a "short story" and still be connected to complete a larger narrative and character history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    probably not the absolute best Atwood piece ever, but wonderful nonetheless. I loved reading the descriptions of the farms that Nell and Tig lived on - once again, a home in the woods away from everyone? Sign me up! It was a moving collection though, lots of life and death topics popping up here and there. If you like Atwood, this is definitely one to check out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not the most compelling Atwood—maybe because these interrelated short stories seemed to offer the worst of both worlds: an expectation for the plot development of a novel that short stories can't deliver on, but some "carry-over" from one story to the next that seemed to detract from the impact of each story on its own. Nevertheless, even mediocre Atwood is better than most other authors at their best.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Beautifully written. A poignant description of life, growing up, and the challenges associated. There wasn't a compelling "story", however. It felt too much like reading about someone else's mundane life. 2.5 stars.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Really lovely, original book with many inter-related stories building into a wonderful character collage back and forward in time of the protagonist and her family. Laugh out loud funny in some places, wry and quirky in others. No one, absolutely no one, writes like Margaret Atwood.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An intriguing mix of connected stories that deal with the complexities of human experience, from love to parenting, aging, and death.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I wasn't really able to relate the title of the book to the stories it contained. Written with skill, but my imagination failed to engage with the characters. "By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, tragic, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal" -- to me it was none of these things; I even wonder if the reviewer was describing a completely different book. Ultimately, somewhat dull and tedious.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a strange cross over between series of short stories and a novel. You could easily make a case of it being a novel, but I think it is best described as a set of short stories - but it's marginal. The stories concern Nell and her family. At first a lot is not knosn about her, the first story finds her married, age uncertain, name not mentioned. The second story, she's 11 or 12 and her mother is pregnant with a baby who turns out to be a younger sister. It conerns the same woman each time, although it jumps around in time, such that it is not chronological. Some times what you learn turns what you thought you already knew on it's head. It's about the nature of families and of love, and I think, how your current state can be deceptive, but is shaped by our pasts. it's well written and, at times, evokes a world that has long past, and the trials of continued existence, in a sympathetic way.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Strong writing, but the subject of many of the stories was only mildly interesting to me. It seemed too domestic on the whole, with the main character taking up residence on a farm. There were some notable exceptions though - “The Headless Horseman”, “My Last Duchess”, “The Labrador Fiasco”, and “The Boys at the Lab” are all very good. Just this quote, on aging:“People she loves – people her own age – a lot of those people have died. Most of them have died. Hardly any of them are left. She wants to know about each death as it happens, but then she won’t mention those people again. She’s got them safe, inside her head somewhere, in a form she prefers. She’s got them back in the layer of time where they belong.”
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I am usually a big Atwood fan. Some of the books she has written have been masterpieces in my opinion. But the last couple I have tried, Oryx & Crake, Edible Woman, and now this one, have just bored me to tears. I don't know how these are so much different from her other stories but I just couldn't get through them at all. I kept thinking this one would get better but the characters' lives were so boorrriiinnggg. I don't care about how many eggs the chicken laid or if the weasel got in the barn again... Just not enough character development or action or something. If you haven't read much Atwood, definitely read the Handmaid's Tale, Blind Assassin, Surfacing, and Cat's Eye. Skip this one. It's a snoozer.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Margaret Atwood never lets me down. I picked this book up because it advertised itself as a short story collection. After reading the first few stories I made the connection that the characters seemed to have remarkably similar lifestyles...and names. A quick flip to the back and I realize that indeed they are the same characters! So rather than a short story collection (that can be difficult to get into), this collection seemed more like snapshots of one person's life, starting as a child, through the awkward teenage years, first lives, adulthood, and finally to the death of a parent. This collection does a great job of showing the life cycle.

    An excellent read once again Atwood!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Atwood is one of the masters. She can do anything but in my view what she excels at more than all the other things she excels at is characterization. The opening of the story The Entities about Lillie the real estate broker is one of the best examples of using summary that I can find. The confiding tone, the conversational intimacy belie the fact that she is giving you this whole woman's life. As a collection it is different from her other work. It is dedicated to her family and so I presume to a degree we don't find in her other work, her audience was targeted. The stories don't feel as ambitious. The characters are more passive particularly in the many connected stories about Tig and Nell and Oona. The characters are clueless at times and life happens to them and they don't possess much insight. It' s not that you don't like them, but you don't like them very much. Stuff that happens is farm stuff, mildly amusing tales of what the animals get up to. Good but not Atwood's most forceful arresting work. Besides that there are two framed stories The Last Duchess and Labrador Fiasco, and this last one is particularly problematic since the I character doesn't reveal much of herself. Atwood is better at third. The last story about a mother who is dwindling - she's over 90 - feels autobiographical and yet just when you are lulled, Atwood can surprise with an astonishing remark such as when the mother not wanting to hear more, turns inside and Atwood says she returns to the world of legend to sum up the old woman's relationship with her past. How it is almost entirely assembled in her mind. I was reminded often of Munro.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Meh. A decent set of short stories by Margaret Atwood. Definitely not her best work. I did enjoy 'The Last Duchess' and the series of stories with Nell and Tig.

    If you're a die-hard Margaret Atwood fan, give it a shot. Otherwise, skip it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It's amazing how the stories all start out in one direction, then follow a certain path that seems, but is, related to the beginning of the story. I really "picked up" and put down this book a lot, so I didn't read it through very carefully, or I might have discovered more about its intricacies. As it was, I liked how the stories are stand-alones, yet all connected because the characters are recurring. In that sense it's almost a novel; more so than [author:Stuart McLean] short stories, at least. It's good literature, and not a 'typical' [author:Margaret Atwood], if there is such a thing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not much to say. Really enjoyed this; will read more by this author. Also: this doesn't read like a collection of short stories, but rather a set of intertwined narratives.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I felt as if I were groping through brambles in a night so dark I couldn't see my own hands. At my wit's end had been, before this, merely an expression, but now it described a concrete reality: I could see my wits unrolling, like a ball of string, length after length of wits being played out, each length failing to hold fast, breaking off as if rotten, until finally the end of the string would be reached, and what then? How many days were left for me to fill -- for me to fill responsibly -- before the real parents would come back and take over, and I could escape to my life?This is the story of a woman's life told in short story form. While the stories can stand alone, they work beautifully together to create a portrait of a life. Nell comes of age just before the sixties and seventies upended the social order, turning her from an independent spirit into someone just not adventurous enough. Her life is an ordinary one, but beautifully told. My favorite story is His Last Duchess, in which Nell thinks about the women she reads about in her literature class. While I love Atwood's more adventurous novels, like Oryx and Crake and The Blind Assassin, I think this quieter story allows her writing and nuanced characterizations to really shine.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I don't really like short stories, and I don't really like autobiographies. So this very autobiographical feeling collection of short stories was never going to hit the spot for me. However, my library doesn't have a huge range of audio books, and I do like Atwood lots.I found the deliberately-crypticness quite annoying, especially as it was an audio book so I couldn't flick backwards and forwards and look for clues. Was this person the same as the previous person? Was this sister the same as the previous sister? I guess this is Art, and I am just a heathen. Atwoods short stories are like a shaft of sunlight, illuminating a small patch of house from a strange angle - everything is bright and vivid, and you see it far more powerfully than you usually would - but sometimes you wish she would just switch on all the lights and tell the story straight. Like many autobiographical things, nothing much really happens. Just normal people living normal lives, much of the drama between the cracks of the stories. Actually, they are fascinating people living interesting lives, so perhaps the fact that they feel familiar and prosaic tells you something about the storytelling. The final story, reflecting on how her mother loves to be told stories about her life when she is old, and the protagonist only knows the ones her mother has told her, and the glimpses of others she sees in the photoalbum, make you feel that this book was written as a gift to the narrators future self...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Moral Disorder and Other Stories follows one woman named Nell through different periods of her life. In the form of several short stories we see her as a child taking care of those around her, as an adult finding her way on her own, as a mistress, and a wife and mother and everything in between. We glimpse at quirky pieces of furniture that come to define a part of her life, at a mattress on the floor of her lover's home and how knitting a cover for it can quickly become an agreement, a choice made, a path taken. While reading this I felt like a bit of a voyeur; like I was seeing through Nell's eyes as she was looking back over all of the moments she'd lived that were important to her, and all the time she had no idea I was there sharing her secrets; secrets that prove it's not only the happy moments that define us and set us on our course. As Nell says when thinking back on a particular memory..."Yet I think of that period as having been a happy time in my life... Happy is the wrong word. Important."Margaret Atwood is brilliant with words and captures perfectly an average life and all the emotions that come along with it. I haven't read anything by her previous to this but definitely plan to check out more of her work now that I've finished this collection.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I guess I have to confess that I'm not a big fan of short stories (except if they are science fiction in which case I usually enjoy them). These short stories were more of a continuing dialogue than individual short stories so it was more like reading a novel than a book of short stories. As I read I suspected that most of these stories are autobiographical, a suspicion that is born out by a rather lengthy article from The Guardian. So, in a way, that made them more interesting to me. (She did have a much younger sister so are the tales about her true? And if so, how does her sister feel about that?)I think my favourite story is probably the title story which details how the couple (Nell and Tig) populate their "farm" with animals of all kinds and the difficult choices you have to make about those animals. It reminded me a lot of the farm I grew up on. Every year we would have newborn lambs being bottle raised in the kitchen. And I can still recall being butted into the fence by the ram. Atwood captures all the nuances of life on a farm.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An intriguing and discombobulated novel, essentially a series of short stories that add up to the life of the lead charcter, Nell. Primarily the focus is the development of her relationships with key individuals in her life: her parents, her younger sibling and her partner, Tig. As ever with Atwood, she draws core themes of her novel from acutely observed events that by themselves are insignificant but taken together become a narrative. This is not a gripping book, but it is an interesting one.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Margaret Atwood is a master at taking the mundane and making it fascinating. Not a story or series of stories with a riveting plot, but rather a snapshot of the intricacies of human nature.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Moral Disorder and Other Stories follows one woman named Nell through different periods of her life. In the form of several short stories we see her as a child taking care of those around her, as an adult finding her way on her own, as a mistress, and a wife and mother and everything in between. We glimpse at quirky pieces of furniture that come to define a part of her life, at a mattress on the floor of her lover's home and how knitting a cover for it can quickly become an agreement, a choice made, a path taken. While reading this I felt like a bit of a voyeur; like I was seeing through Nell's eyes as she was looking back over all of the moments she'd lived that were important to her, and all the time she had no idea I was there sharing her secrets; secrets that prove it's not only the happy moments that define us and set us on our course. As Nell says when thinking back on a particular memory..."Yet I think of that period as having been a happy time in my life... Happy is the wrong word. Important."Margaret Atwood is brilliant with words and captures perfectly an average life and all the emotions that come along with it. I haven't read anything by her previous to this but definitely plan to check out more of her work now that I've finished this collection.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I love Margaret Atwood. I can really only read short stories that she's authored.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Imagine you are meandering through a well-organised, neatly kept and very pretty garden. You start out admiring borders of pink and white azaleas, but then with a curve in the path suddenly find yourself surrounded by bright yellow daffodils when you thought you were heading towards the lavenders and lilacs. Reading Atwood’s latest collection of short stories is a bit like this. Her prose has the lightness and delicacy of these flowers but the stories twist and turn in unexpected ways and as with the best gardens, you are left feeling there are shaded spaces and delightful aspects not fully appreciated in a single encounter. The language may be light and delicate but Atwood addresses substantial, fundamental and timeless truths, and does it with her usual exquisite irony and gentle humour. The Bad News of the first story is imagined “as a huge bird, with the wings of a crow and the face of my Grade Four schoolteacher” which drops rotten eggs. Death, anyone’s death, but especially her partner’s, is the bad egg the aging Nell doesn’t want to hear, “not yet”. The compilation begins and ends with stories about aging and disintegration and the inevitability, if not acceptance, of death. The intervening linked stories dissect the pleasures and agonies of a girl maturing, and show how she negotiates her important relationships. We see her engage—or struggle to engage—with her sister, parents, lovers, partner, partner’s ex-wife and partner’s children, though not with her own children: an odd gap in an otherwise rich portrait of a woman’s life. This collection also explores the relationship of reading to living, of the role of stories in influencing our understanding, our dreaming and our remembering. A cookbook, The Art of Cooking and Serving, presents the younger Nell with a more attractive, ordered, and certain world than that which she inhabits, but she eventually, suddenly, senses a future where she “no longer has to do service”. My Last Duchess weaves Nell’s analysis of the eponymous poem with her developing understanding of boy/girl relationships. In this tale it is the girl who survives. Later stories focus less on written narratives as a source of illumination and more on other characters’ personal legends, those tellings and re-tellings and rememberings and misremembering by which we come to know each other and construct ourselves. As Nell notes in The Other Place, “We can’t really travel to the past, no matter how we try. If we do it’s as tourists.” Atwood offers up these little tours, these little explorations of both the significant and the not-so-obviously-important moments in her character’s life. Is it Atwood’s life? It might be, or some parts of her life. That doesn’t matter. It has a sense of truth to it, whether it is true or not. Any of us who have had similar experiences will recognise the emotional and existential reality of these stories even if our details are different.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    probably not the absolute best Atwood piece ever, but wonderful nonetheless. I loved reading the descriptions of the farms that Nell and Tig lived on - once again, a home in the woods away from everyone? Sign me up! It was a moving collection though, lots of life and death topics popping up here and there. If you like Atwood, this is definitely one to check out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed these interconnected stories very much. In total, they describe the life of Nell, from early childhood to old age. A description like you would get from a series of photographs or random memories -- a description like we tend to get about family members from earlier generations, or the families of friends or co-workers. That could be why, in spite of several gaps in my knowledge of Nell, I really felt I knew her; because that is the way we know so many people in our fast-paced lives. Margaret Atwood is a fine writer and this is a wonderful, thought-provoking and compelling book.