Stone Mattress By Margaret Atwood

[bart_calendar]

This book is mean. This book is brutal. This book is angry and bitter and designed to tear your soul apart

Comments

[quirkytizzy]

I want to read this but I'm afraid it will hurt. But I love dark fairy tales.

[quirkytizzy]

Stone Mattress itself is online as a stand-alone short story if you want a preview..just google it. :)

[bart_calendar]

Trigger warning on that story for gang rape, elder abuse and multiple murders.

[threemilechild]

Have you read the collection, "Red as Blood," by Tanith Lee?

Incidentally, today's A Softer World made me think of you. http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=1155

[quirkytizzy]

I have not, but I'm going to read both that story and the preview now - good ideas! And lol - that comic is alll about me. Thank you for pointing me towards it, it makes me feel better about holding cats in such high esteem. <3

[threemilechild]

It occurs to me that I should warn you at least one of the stories in that book could be triggery. I am not really a fan of the "abused woman gets revenge" trope -- it's pretty facile and cheap and come ON, can't a woman have another motivation by now? -- but overall there's more depth in the stories there.

If you can't get it from your library or find a copy cheap, let me know.

[bart_calendar]

You've read the book too!

What did you think?

[threemilechild]

I haven't read the Margaret Atwood one. (I wouldn't bother giving a trigger warning for Margaret Atwood; I just figure that's a given.) The Tanith Lee book is one of my favorites ever -- I'm also a big fan of weird fairy tales. I found a copy when I was about ten, and I made everyone I thought interesting read it (and managed to get it back!) for about a decade. Really, I've never stopped.

I think it's interesting that everyone seems to have a different favorite; they are all very good, but it's individual which one speaks to someone,I think.

[bart_calendar]

P.S. That story is making fun of a Patricia Highsmith book which is why it comes off that way. She's switching genders of the killer to try to show how the perception changes with gender.