Author(s): Margaret Atwood

Fiction

"Margaret Atwood has long been praised for the wit, sympathy and intelligence she brings to her depictions of ordinary people struggling with life's complexities. In Moral Disorder, she again draws on common experiences - the birth of a baby, divorce and remarriage, old age and death - to dramatic, often humorous, and telling effect.At twelve, the narrator of The Art of Cooking and Serving does her best to accommodate the arrival of a baby sister. As the years pass, however, the satisfaction of helping her distracted mother gives way to a longing for the 'seductive and tawdry and frightening pleasures' of being a teenager, and in a moment both painful and exhilarating, she boldly declares her independence. The Entities traces the intertwined stories of two women haunted by the past. The women's unlikely friendship becomes a catalyst for each, forcing them to acknowledge the demons behind their cheerful, even-tempered facades. In The Bad News, an aging, long-married woman busies herself with routines and familiar conversations, but as small things go wrong, larger questions about the future become harder to keep at bay.Atwood once again creates characters and situations that perfectly reflect the difficulties of reconciling social obligations and the secret longings of the heart."