Margaret Atwood

With pieces from 1992's Good Bones and 1983's Murder in the Dark, this collection of works that defies easy categorization was brought together in 2001 as Good Bones and Simple Murders. Here, Margaret Atwood offers wickedly sharp prose poems, flash fiction, and micro-fables that challenge and up-end the myths, fairytales, and stories we all know and love, showcasing her at her most playful and subversive.

Among the miniatures gathered here are Gertrude offering Hamlet a piece of her mind, the real truth about the Little Red Hen, a reincarnated bat explaining how Bram Stoker got Dracula all wrong, and five home-economist methods of making a man. Atwood has fashioned an enthralling collection of parables, monologues, prose poems, condensed science fictions, reconfigured fairy tales, and other diminutive masterpieces—punctuated with her own charming illustrations—and dissected the myths and social scripts that shape our lives. A feast of comic entertainment, Good Bones and Simple Murders is witty, thoughtful, and provoking.