‘Simmering’ is a short story by the Canadian author and poet Margaret Atwood (born 1939). Published in Atwood’s 1983 collection Murder in the Dark, the story might be regarded as a piece of flash fiction, micro-fiction, or even an example of prose poetry. ‘Simmering’ posits a society in which men predominantly do the cooking, while women go out and earn a living.
Margaret Atwood
A Summary and Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s ‘Happy Endings’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Happy Endings’ is a short story (or, perhaps more accurately, a piece of metafiction) which was first published in Margaret Atwood’s 1983 collection, Murder in the Dark. The story offers six alternative storylines which feature a relationship between a man and a woman.
Because of its postmodern and metafictional elements, ‘Happy Endings’ requires a few words of analysis to be fully understood. Before we begin, it might be worth summarising the plot (or plots) of the various storylines which Atwood presents to us.
A Summary and Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s ‘Bread’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Bread’ is a short story (although it might also be categorised as a prose poem) from Margaret Atwood’s slim 1983 collection of prose pieces, Murder in the Dark. The story invites the reader to imagine a series of scenarios involving bread; Atwood uses these individual tableaux to encourage us to consider a number of themes including plenty, want, famine, poverty, honour, and even the nature of imagination itself.
A Short Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s ‘This Is a Photograph of Me’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood (born 1939) is best-known as a novelist, as the author of books such as The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake. But she began her career as a poet. ‘This Is a Photograph of Me’, today’s poem, is taken from her first collection of poems, The Circle Game, which was published in 1964 when Atwood was only in her mid-twenties.
You can read ‘This Is a Photograph of Me’ here before proceeding to our analysis.
Five Fascinating Facts about Margaret Atwood
Fun facts about Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale
1. Atwood has had a record number of nominations for the Booker Prize. The Canadian novelist has been nominated five times for the prestigious award, and on one of those occasions, Atwood won the coveted prize, for The Blind Assassin
