The heart of Margaret Atwood's new story collection features seven vignettes from the lives of characters Tig and Nell.
Tig has now passed away and Nell is recounting slices of their lives together. There's a very funny look back at a first aid class they took together in their younger years, when "obliviousness had served them well." Also an ode to their late cat, Smudgie, written in the style of "Morte d'Arthur" by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
The final Nell and Tig tale drives home the poignancy of grief, as Nell goes through the cabin picking up things that Tig left behind. When she finds a wooden box he built decades ago, she eagerly opens it thinking it's some sort of gift from beyond. But it's just a box, filled with wool and darning needles. "Nell had never known him to darn any socks — if he needed something sewed, he gave it to her — but here is the proof that it was always a possibility. Self-sufficiency: a worthy aim."
The other stories are more of a mixed bag, but they're all quick reads. "Metempsychosis: Or, the Journey of the Soul" stars a snail resurrected in the body of a "mid-level female customer service representative" at a bank.
The book concludes with the title story. Nell and others are at the family cabin reminiscing. Signs of Tig are everywhere, including a pancake griddle hanging on the wall. It prompts a memory of "jovial sourdough pancake fryings — Tig doing the flipping, back when largesse and riotous living and growing children had been the order of the day." Nell can't look at it directly, "but she always knows it's there." It's as good a depiction of grief as any.
Rob Merrill is a writer for the Associated Press.
Old Babes in the Wood
By: Margaret Atwood.
