From Publishers Weekly
Biting anger, humor and interest in the fantastic have marked inimitable Atwood works like The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake. In this odd set of terse, mostly prose ripostes, Atwood takes stock of life and career"this graphomania in a flimsy cave"and finds both come up short. Staged from behind screens of updated fables and myths ("Salome Was a Dancer" begins "Salome went after the Religious Studies teacher"), the pieces rage icily against the constraints of gender, age (witheringly: "I have decided to encourage the young"), fame and even "Voice": "What people saw was me. What I saw was my voice, ballooning out in front of me like the translucent green membrane of a frog in full trill." Along with a few poems and childlike line drawings, what keeps this collection of 30-odd fictions from being a set of rants is the offhanded intimacy and acerbic self-knowledge with which Atwood delivers them: "The person you have in mind is lost. That's the picture I'm getting." Threaded throughout are dead-on asides on the tyrannies of time and the limits of truth telling in society, so that when Hoggy Groggy hires Foxy Loxy to silence Chicken Little forever, there is no doubt with whom the author's sympathies lie. (Jan. 10)
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From School Library Journal
Adult/High SchoolA quirky collection of short tales and a few poems that can be read in any order. Although not all of these selections will appeal to teens, some will, especially Plots for Exotics, in which the narrator, who has always aspired to be a main character, has to apply for a job at the plot factory, where he learns he is not main-character material. Others, such as Our Cat Enters Heaven, will also engage teen readers. The pieces are brief and varied in style. The ironic and often sarcastic tone is one that many teens will appreciate. Simple line drawings appear throughout. As a whole, the book should appeal to anyone who appreciates a wry and somewhat biting look at society._Judy Braham, George Mason Regional Library, Annandale, VA_
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