Atwood | shortsonline

There Was Once

shortsonline — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 21:00:28 +0000

Quick Read by Margaret Atwood. A storyteller is humiliated into whittling his twenty-four-word opening sentence down to just one, and then changing it. This humorous vignette mocks our modern-day obsession with political correctness by illustrating how, taken to extremes, almost anything one says has the potential to offend someone.

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Bread

shortsonline — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 02:02:15 +0000

Quick Read by Margaret Atwood. A story in which bread is used as a metaphor to illustrate a range of themes associated with starvation and suffering. Sadly, it concludes with the inference that most unaffected people prefer to turn a blind eye to such things.

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Rape Fantasies

shortsonline — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 09:22:38 +0000

Short Story by Margaret Atwood. Set in a bar, the protagonist (Estelle) relates a lunchtime discussion she had with co-workers about rape fantasies. Two of them dream of erotic, romantic encounters, while another remains awkwardly silent. Estelle’s imagined attackers all have a physical or mental impediment requiring her help!

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Stone Mattress

shortsonline — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 07:00:54 +0000

Short Story by Margaret Atwood. A woman who has become wealthy by helping four elderly husbands “depart a little sooner than might have been expected” treats herself to an arctic cruise. She recognizes a man who had brutally raped her fifty years earlier, and begins to plot the perfect murder.

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Happy-Endings

shortsonline — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:39:17 +0000

Quick Read by Margaret Atwood. The six “mini-stories” in this short meta-fictional narrative satirize a common element of the story form. The message seems to be that the ultimate denouement of a story matters little; the key is in its exposition and “How and Why” of events in between.

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The Bog Man

shortsonline — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 00:50:03 +0000

Short Story by Margaret Atwood. A university student’s hero worship of her archaeology professor leads to a torrid affair during which she accompanies him to inspect a 2,000-year-old body preserved in a peat bog. As his invisible wife comes between them, she feels “cheap and furtive” and ends the relationship.

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The Age of Lead

shortsonline — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:24:34 +0000

Short Story by Margaret Atwood. A frozen 150-year-old body provides a lesson for the living. The story uses the mystery illness that killed members of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition to highlight the dangers of consumerism and modern technology such as soil and water pollution, toxic waste and acid rain.

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The Man from Mars

shortsonline — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:18:18 +0000

Novelette by Margaret Atwood. A "big-boned", athletic Canadian university student becomes anxious but gains self-esteem when a creepy-looking “Oriental” student begins to stalk her. Other men who have previously shown little interest in her take notice. Wondering what he sees in her, they begin to ask her out.

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