Many collections of stories, essays and poems, more than fifty novels, numerous literary awards, including the prestigious Booker Prize twice, and highly successful film adaptations of her work, most notably the international TV hit series ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: on the Canadian author Margaret Atwood (Ottawa, 1939) stands no measure. You know that and yet she continues to amaze you.
Atwood is now 83, but years seem to count for her when it comes to the pace of writing and publishing. recently appeared Berries in the forest a collection of stories, all but one from the last three years.
Those years do count in another respect in this collection of stories: the theme is all about the approach of the end of life, the loss of life partners, but also their continued existence in the form of memories. Memories so strong sometimes that they make him – it goes in Berries in the forest always to evoke a him in the current reality. The berries of the title should be understood in the metaphorical sense of very old women.
The fifteen stories of this collection are divided into three parts. The second, My Witch Mother is sandwiched between the parts Tig and Nell and Nell and Tig . In the first part, Tig and Nell are an old couple who can no longer live out their love for hiking in the wooded, Canadian nature because their bodies no longer allow it. Fortunately, there is still their log cabin in the forest near a lake. But Nell realizes that being with Tig won’t last long: Tig may still be physically present, but his mind is increasingly withdrawn.
The stories of the third part, Nell and Tig , are situated on the same spot, but several years later. Tig has passed away, but he still regularly appears in Nell’s consciousness. So clear even at times that her memory deceives her senses and she sees him standing there. Of course, missing Tig Nell hurts. But thanks to Nell’s down-to-earth view of life and her realization that its finiteness is also liberating, it’s certainly not all sadness in these stories, on the contrary.
The stories of the middle part, The Witch Mother range from childhood memories and their influence on life as an old(er) woman, to the sometimes cheerfully cynical way of dealing with the realization of the approaching death of a group of elderly friends.
Atwood’s writing style is characterized by the way in which she manages to depict very difficult matters – death, oppression, the world becoming unlivable – in stories and novels. In a style that is clear and never out for effect and that is colored by the relativizing humor of the realization that the situation is hopeless, but not necessarily worrying.
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Title Berries in the forest Author Margaret Atwood Translation Lidwien Biekmann Publisher Prometheus Price 23.99 euros (256 pages)
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