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The Tent
by Margaret Atwood
This is the third collection of fictional essays from the Canadian author.
Nan A. Talese, 176 pages
01/10/2006
$18.00
ISBN: 0385516681
Fiction
Essays
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Daily Telegraph Caroline Moore
Against all the odds... these nicely-turned fragments engage the imagination, and tease the mind. Even so, at the end, I was left longing for Atwood's next full-length novel, which is a back-handed sort of compliment.
PopMatters Tim O'Neil
Exercising her skill with extreme precision, utilizing clipped, brutally clear and concise language, Atwood marks the map that circumscribes the nightmares of modernity, of helplessness and futility, of mortality and the inevitable. If it weren't for the dry, mordant humor with which she leavens the volume throughout, it would be almost unbearable.
San Francisco Chronicle Kate Washington
Much of the territory covered here is vintage Atwood, but there are enough twists and fresh takes in these acerbic musings to keep longtime readers interested and, perhaps, to hook those for whom Atwood is unfamiliar.
The Guardian Hermione Lee
This is the book of someone who is so good at what she does, and so famous for it, that she can be indulged in her playtime and her whims. One of the world's major writers is having some fun; and who can grudge it her?
The Independent Michele Roberts
"The Tent", the strongest of the miniature fables in this volume, offers a writerly credo of sorts. The other little tales in this wry collection function as torn-off scraps of tent fabric, fluttering like urgent flags to draw our attention to the strange and hostile world in which Atwood thinks we live.
The Spectator Diana Hendry
A splendid mix of tales, retellings of myths, fables and fairy stories, a couple of poems and what the blurb describes as ‘fictional essays’.
Los Angeles Times Merle Rubin
The pieces in "The Tent" are often--no insult to their author intended--"witchy," in the sense they exude the grimly amusing wisdom of a woman who's seen a lot over the course of a good many years. [9 Jan 2006, p.E1]
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Aritha Van Herk
This is a crone's assemblage of cures and curses, warnings and dire predictions. Rather than diverting us from the pestilent and petulant world, these fables vise the hand of a reluctant reader, pull her along to view strange and weird inversions. Together, they crescendo in a Cassandra-like wail of "woe, woe, woe." [21 Jan 2006]
Booklist Donna Seaman
Atwood adeptly parodies fairy tales and fables, and offers unnerving twists on confessions, and vignettes, some accompanied by her playful drawings. [15 Nov 2005, p. 26]
The Guardian Anita Sethi
The Tent exposes the nuts and bolts of the tortuous creative process, but Atwood's talent struggles to breathe inside these claustrophobic prisons.
Publishers Weekly
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.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Sophie Ratcliffe
While The Tent displays little but suspicion of what Margaret Atwood has termed the "low art of storytelling", there is still a rooted belief in doing the "right thing". It makes for a dark, intriguing, but ultimately bewildering examination of worth and worthiness, in which the short story feels as if it has been stripped to "brown earth".
Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp
Like staring at shards of pottery--some of the fragments are more graceful than others, but they don't add up to a finished whole.
Kirkus Reviews
If Atwood's name weren't attached, no publisher would bother putting this trivia between book covers.
 The average user rating for this book is 9.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
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