Stone Mattress

Margaret Atwood returns to short fiction with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships bringing to mind her award-winning 1996 novel,<i> Alias Grace</i>.<br><br>A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband in “<i>Alphinland</i>,” the first of three loosely linked stories about the romantic geometries of a group of writers and artists.<br><br>In “<i>The Freeze-Dried Bridegroom</i>,” a man who bids on an auctioned storage space has a surprise.<br><br>In “<i>Lusus Naturae</i>,” a woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire.<br><br>In “<i>Torching the Dusties</i>,” an elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence.<br><br>And in “<i>Stone Mattress</i>,” a long-ago crime is avenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite.<br><br>In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.