“Old Babes in the Wood”
by Margaret Atwood
from the April 26 & May 3, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
I‘m glad to see more work coming from Margaret Atwood, now an octogenarian having turned 80 shortly after (co-) winning the Booker Prize in 2019 for The Testaments. I have not particularly cared for her novels for some time and still haven’t read The Testaments, but I do value her insight and ability, and I’ve still enjoyed her short stories a lot. Her last collection was 2014’s Stone Mattress, and I think it would be wonderful if we got another full collection soon.
“Old Babes in the Wood” takes place at a family cabin on the lake; two elderly sisters are there, as they have been often since their father built it some 70 years earlier. This kind of premise captures me immediately — I’m not sure why!
Here is how the story starts.
“Pants or dead leaves?” Lizzie says.
“My guess is pants,” Nell says. The two of them stand on the dock in their age-inappropriate bathing suits and stare at the dark patch under the water.
I agree, Trevor. I really liked all her books up to an including the first in her kind of science fiction trilogy. I bought the second one and finished it but I was sorely disappointed. I actually bought the third one after attending an interview with her here in Brussels yet I never started it.
I never bothered with The Testaments, which I feared might be too much like the TV series version of the Handmaid’s Tale (I really enjoyed the book and a BBC radio play version many years ago), which I thought was a travesty of the novel. The short stories you mention are great.
I bought her selected poems a long time ago in a flush of enthusiasm for the author but was not impressed.
Nice story. The focus of the story is the absence/loss/death of Tig, presumably Nell’s late husband. But that’s not really what the story is about — it’s about growing very old and knowing that you’re being moved politely but inexorably toward the Exit.
I’m probably well disposed toward this rumination since I am in the advanced years myself. But the story handles its material gracefully. It’s both sad and whimsical at the same time — “Don’ be maudlin” is a nice motto.
William interprets closely my sentiments and views as well, it was a wonderful story.
In addition, my reading experience was very personal; this story and the related ´this week in fiction´ fits strongly into my life.
I write this in a log cabin without tap water and only solar electricity, situated in the northern boreal forest by a lake, the ice melted last weekend. This cabin is a summer cottage, but the three others during 70+ years were originally intended for year-round use.
I greatly appreciate that in recent years Deborah Treisman has given fair space to many authors nearing the end of their careers.
I wish this were an excerpt from a full length book. I would have immediately purchased it!