Stone Mattress

Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales is a 2014 collection of nine short stories from Canadian author Margaret Atwood. While Atwood has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she is probably best known for her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Other works by this author include Cat’s Eye, The Testaments, and Oryx and Crake. Atwood often tackles the power of the written word in her work. Many of the characters in Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales are writers. Atwood revisits other of her familiar themes in these stories, including gender, aging, revenge, and identity.

Plot Summary

The first three stories in Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales are linked together by Constance Starr and Alphinland, the best-selling fantasy series that Constance authored. “Alphinland,” the first story in the collection, introduces Constance as a widow looking back to when she first created Alphinland as a means to make money and to create a fantasy world where Constance could escape from Gavin, her boyfriend at the time. In “Revenant,” Gavin dies after being forced to acknowledge Constance’s literary success, though he had not contacted Constance in years. The third story “Dark Lady,” taking its name from Gavin’s most celebrated poem, takes place at Gavin’s funeral, where Constance finds herself face to face with the other women in Gavin’s life.