Happy Endings - Margaret Atwood - ★★★.¾

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AUTHOR: Margaret Atwood
GENRE: Short Story.
RATING: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: An interesting experimental short work, highlighting the disparate elements of life and story-writing. Quick and quirky.


I have yet to read any of Margaret Atwood’s full-length novels, but based on whatever short stories of hers I have read, this one is the simplest and yet, the most abstract.

Presented as a set of six stories—A, B, C, D, E & F, story A is the ultimate goal, and all the others lead to it through varied paths.

The start is clear: John and Mary meet.

The end is clear: Eventually, they die. (‘Eventually’ being the key word.)

What can happen in between? Six options are provided to you through the above six variants.

(I’d love to know what my Canadian friends think about Story F. 😁)

In a way, this little work is also a story-within-a-story, with the main story being how a writer has the beginning and end pat down, but needs to fill in the middle, with the six mini-stories depicting alternative plots for the same beginning and end.

As is typical for Atwood, the stories have a strong feminist vibe, which is good, but with strong male-bashing as well, which is not good. There’s a somewhat cocky undertone to the writing, but on the whole, it is an entertaining parody of romances in fiction (and in real life.) I liked the parting thoughts talking about a writer’s challenges.

Recommended for the unusual structure and the jovial yet blunt ending. It’s a quick read as well; I took longer to review it than to read it!

This metafiction work was first published in a 1983 Canadian collection, ‘Murder in the Dark’. I read it as this week’s story in ‘The Short Story Club’, through THIS LINK.

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