Old Babes in the Wood is Margaret Atwood's short-story collection, mixing satire, folklore, and a tender decades-long love story. The release came from Doubleday, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and a tcl-bookreviews.com review of the book points to a mix of standalone pieces and a connected sequence about a couple across the decades. It is positioned as adult literary and genre fiction, with settings ranging from contemporary Canada to historical and futuristic eras.
For our readers who follow Atwood, this is a working collection that mixes the serious with the playful.
- Author: Margaret Atwood.
- Genre: Short-story collection / literary fiction.
- Themes: Loss, memory, relationships, folklore, satire.
- Hook: Seven connected stories follow a married couple across a long life.
The structure
The book is a mix of standalone pieces and a connected sequence. As summarized in the tcl-bookreviews.com review, the title piece follows two sisters on a summer evening wrestling with loss and memory, another story uses a folkloric frame to look at alienation and miscommunication, and a third follows a daughter whose mother claims to be a witch. Around those stand a set of linked stories built around a couple named Nell and Tig.
The heart of the collection is the seven connected stories that follow Nell and Tig across the decades. Taken together, those pieces are essentially a novella. Atwood traces the couple's life from courtship to widowhood, with a detour into Tig's father's experience as a soldier in the Great War. As the collection moves toward its later stories, the tone shifts. Tig dies, and the remaining stories follow Nell as she figures out how to carry on without him.
What works
Atwood's voice is the headline. She writes short stories with the same control she brings to novels. The collection's tonal range is wide, and Atwood handles the shifts without dropping the thread.
The connected stories are particularly strong. A reader who comes to the collection for the marriage plot will find a long, tender portrait of a couple that survives grief, distance, and the slow unwinding of a shared life. The later stories are emotionally direct in a way that Atwood's novels rarely are, and the shift works.
The genre touches also work. There is a story with an alien life-form sent to entertain quarantined earthlings, and it is funny. The folklore touches are handled with a light hand. The satire is pointed without being mean.
Where it stumbles
The collection's range is its strength and its weakness. A reader who comes for the marriage plot will find the folklore and satire pieces less satisfying. A reader who comes for the satire will find the marriage stories quieter than expected. The collection's breadth is also its unevenness.
The connected stories also work better as a novella than as a sequence. A reader who wants the marriage plot in full would have been better served by a stand-alone novella. The collection's structure splits that arc across seven pieces, and the breaks are sometimes in the wrong places.
Our analysis
Old Babes in the Wood is a working collection from a writer at the top of her form. It is not Atwood's strongest single piece, but it is a useful map of her current range. For our readers, the collection is worth reading for the connected stories alone. The folklore and satire pieces are a useful bonus.
The collection also fits into Atwood's recent pattern of mixing short-story collections with longer novels. The connected stories in this volume suggest she is interested in exploring the novella form through the short-story collection, which is a useful development.
A reader's scenario
Say you have read one or two Atwood novels and want to try her short fiction. You pick up Old Babes in the Wood for the marriage plot. You read the seven connected stories first, then go back and read the standalone stories. You add the collection to your shortlist for the next reading season and consider rereading her earlier collections.
What to watch next
Watch for Atwood's next novel. Watch also for other literary short-story collections that mix the personal with the speculative. Old Babes in the Wood is a strong collection that earns its place on a shelf. Pick it up if you like literary short fiction with a speculative edge. Skip it if you need a single-voice collection.
Frequently asked questions
Is the collection suitable for all readers?
The collection is adult literary fiction, with some explicit content. It is intended for adult readers.
Do I need to read the stories in order?
No. The collection works as a series of standalone stories plus a connected sequence.
Is the collection a good entry point to Atwood?
For many readers, yes. The collection's range makes it a useful introduction to her current work.
How long is the collection?
The publisher's summary does not list a page count, but it is a standard short-story collection length.
Inspired by reporting from: tcl-bookreviews.com