Product Description

Here are brilliantly rendered stories that explore themes of loss and discovery, of the gap between youthful dreams and mature reality, of how we connect with others and with the sometimes hidden part of ourselves.

In each of these tales Margaret Atwood deftly illuminates the single instant that shapes a whole life: in a few brief pages we watch as characters progress through the passions of youth into the precarious complexities of middle age. By superimposing the past on the present Atwood paints interior landscapes shaped by time, regret and life's lost chances, endowing even the banal with a sense of mystery. Richly layered and disturbing, poignant at times and scathingly witty at others, the stories in Wilderness Tips take us into the strange and secret places of the heart and inform the familiar world in which we live with truths that cut to the bone.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #325157 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08-24
• Released on: 1998-08-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Set mainly in Toronto or in the Canadian woods, the 10 beautifully controlled tales in Atwood's new collection testify to the unpredictability of life, its missed connections, unsolvable mysteries and the lightning passage of time. Most of them are refracted through the sensibilities and memories of female protagonists, who reflect on the moment when they realized that "nothing has turned out" as they expected. Past and present coalesce seamlessly in these stories; Atwood is particularly good at capturing the feelings of adolescence and the exact details that typify the culture of the decades from the '50s to the '90s. Events are seen at a distance, related in emotionally muted but acutely revealing prose. The hard-edged tone of "Hairball" perfectly conjures up the ruthless, manipulative protagonist who suddenly realizes that she has been bested by her obnoxious protege. Susanna, in "Uncles," has a similar comeuppance, as she, the consummate trickster who "can fake anything" is betrayed by her mentor. In both "The Bog Man" (the least successful tale, as here Atwood uncharacteristically veers toward melodrama) and "The Age of Lead" a body uncovered long after death serves as a metaphor for buried desires, opportunities and hopes. In the title story, Atwood observes the interrelationships among three sisters and the randy foreigner who has married one of them and made love to the other two. Atwood's ( Cat' s Eye ) uncompromising eye is enhanced by her sinewy, taut prose.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this newest collection of ten short stories, Atwood looks back over three decades that have wrought great changes in women's lives. The impacts of death, disease, deception, and disappointment are explored; Atwood's characters, with their tenuous personal relationships, always endure a terrible aloneness. The loss of trust in others is a recurring theme. In one story a betrayed woman plays a grisly practical joke on her married lover; in another, a man settles for second choice in love and work and lives in apathy thereafter. An art collector's priceless landscapes only serve to remind her of a tragedy in her adolescence. Atwood's stories are unsettling but unforgettable. Recommended for public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/1/91.
- Marnie Webb, King Cty. Lib. System, Seattle
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
An effective, uniformly controlled collection of ten stories from the author of, most recently, Cat's Eye (1989). Gathered here are pieces previously appearing in top short- story forums--The New Yorker, Granta, Saturday Night, Playboy- -providing an excellent sampling of high-proof Atwood. Virtually all the pieces focus on the lives of women equivocally connected to the men around them. In ``Wilderness Tips,'' a middle-aged woman is bluntly confronted with her husband's infidelity. ``Hairball,'' the most disturbing here, involves the dissolution of a woman's affair with a married man; the otherwise naturalistic posture of the story is powerfully undercut by the presence of a removed tumor that the young lady keeps in a jar, eventually sending it, neatly wrapped, to her lover's wife. In ``True Trash,'' a young woman encounters a youth who is still unaware that he had impregnated a camp employee many years earlier. And ``Hack Wednesday'' revolves around a disgruntled journalist brought, whimsically, to the brink of an affair before she backs off--not from any pangs of conscience but out of lethargic concern for the work involved in carrying it off. Like Alice Munro, Atwood has a talent for serving up the nuances of bourgeois Ontario culture, but with Atwood the ingredients are boiled down into a stronger and much more acerbic brew. The author's trademark smirk behind the economical prose can be wearying over the course of an entire collection, but taken separately, the pieces here are solid evidence of the author in full form. Pure Atwood. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

A COLLECTION OF STORIES BY A TRUE MASTER
Margaret Atwood is my favorite living author and this is my favorite short story collection of hers. Each story is filled with regret, incisive narrative, and a cunning eye that sees right through people. If you have a dark sense of humor you will love this collection. "Hairball" is hilariously perverse and "Death by Landscape" is simply touching. I've read this collection several times. These stories will haunt you.

Atwood at her best
I am a big fan of Margaret Atwood. I have enjoyed most all of her novels but, after reading "Dancing Girls", I was under the opinion that short stories were not her thing. However, I believe the collection of stories in "Wilderness Tips" is one of her best works. The stories are superb beginning with "True Trash" which takes us to a summer camp and introduces us to a young woman's secret and a younger man's sad lack of awareness of the life he's created. It ends, or rather, evaporates leaving us with unrealized expectations. "Hairball" is a marvelous story about revenge for a scorned affair. "The Bog Man" is essentially the same subject matter. "Uncles" is a beautiful story about the father figures in a girl's life. Although she doesn't know her real father, she knows her uncles. Their characters are somewhat undeveloped because it is their strength, not their personality that we need to understand. We follow the life of the girl whose security is lost after the uncles are gone. For me, the most compelling story is "Death by Landscape". The story takes place at a summer camp and involves the lives of two girls who become attached after spending successive summers together. The ending is bizarre and Atwood takes us beyond that and leaves us with eerie goosebumps. The other stories are compelling and the reader finishes ready for more. Margaret Atwood is a very gifted writer and may some day be awarded the Nobel Prize. Her insights to femininity (as opposed to feminism) are a prime element of her genius. If you haven't read Atwood, this would be an excellent introduction. If you have read Atwood, then you'll be reading this anyway (if you haven't already).

entrancing, but...
This book's short stories are another example of Ms Atwood's riveting style and her plots that make one feel the tale is really happening to them as it unfolds. I would advise reading her stories with a sense of humor, though, because they can become somewhat depressing and intense. Her emphasis on sexual misadventures and an overinterest in hormonal pleasures seemed to cheapen the very human adventures told by these short stories, and I thought this was the weakest link in these stories. By contrast, I found "Death by Landscape" (which told a powerful story with no dwelling on passion or lust) to be the best and brightest story in this volume. A good read, but, again, bring along a sense of humor and some lightness.