MARGARET ATWOOD Stone Mattress. Reviewed by Lou Heinrich
This strange and entertaining collection of nine stories is a meditation on ageing and the body’s decay.
Perhaps it is the most unglamorous of human traits: to wrinkle, to weaken, to forget. Ageing afflicts all who survive life to a certain point, yet the seemingly drab subject matter means it is not given as much literary attention as more heroic episodes. But Atwood, in her endless understanding of human nature, and her talent for plot and character, crafts a wildly entertaining collection of short stories in Stone Mattress.
Atwood, who is best known for her speculative fiction novels Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid’s Tale, is 75 herself. There is so much pleasure in reading Atwood’s stories: she is a true mistress of the craft and her crisp prose and dark humour echo throughout the collection, along with a touch of gothic, and splash of magical realism. It is a strange, silly and brave collection, and in it we discover how death guides and informs many actions of the elderly.
‘I Dream of Zenia With the Bright Red Teeth’ is a revisiting of Atwood’s characters from The Robber Bride. Together, three friends interpret the significance of their dreams. Zenia, an old friend known to them all for sleeping successively with all of their husbands before she passed away, visits Charis with a warning. This story illustrates everyday symbolism, and the supernatural interaction with the dead.
Throughout the story, the women are infinitely aware of their decaying bodies, and how close that brings them to death:
The three of them are shuffling through the dry leaves in the ravine, taking their weekly walk. It’s a pact they’ve made: to get more exercise, to improve their cellular autophagic rates. Roz has read about this in one of the health magazines in the dentist’s waiting room: bits of your cells eat other bits that are diseased or dying. This intracellular cannibalism is said to help you live longer.
The decay of the body is a theme that runs through all of the stories. For men, this manifests in the humiliation of sexual dysfunction.
We meet Gavin in ‘Revenant’; he is a bitter and angry old man, a once successful poet who now needs constant care. Reynolds, his third wife and 30 years his junior, looks after him in a patronising and disdainful manner. A veritable servant, Reynolds humiliates Gavin often to assert her dominance:
It was one of her kittenish tropes to pretend that Gavin was a dysfunctional pet. Not so far from the truth, he thinks bitterly: he hasn’t yet taken to crapping on the carpet and destroying the furniture and whining for meals, but close.
Once boastful of his sexual prowess, Gavin’s youthful days of attraction and affairs are done:
Reynolds gets going with the lint brush. She attacks his shoulders, then takes a playful swipe in the direction of his crotch. ‘Let’s see if there’s any lint on Mr. Wiggly!’ she says. ‘Keep your lustful claws off my private parts,’ says Gavin. He feels like saying that of course there’s lint on Mr. Wiggly, or dust at any rate, or maybe rust; what does she expect, because as she is well aware Mr. Wiggly has been on the shelf for some time.
As in ‘Revenant’, ‘The Dead Hand Loves You’ features an aged male protagonist looking back on his life. This vivid story is a gloriously silly take on horror conventions: a contract signed by a struggling writer means all profits (from his pulp novel about a disembodied hand) are to be cut into quarters.
Like Gavin, the protagonist must suffer the humiliation of his withered sex. At conventions and festivals, he is propositioned by:
… nubile teeny girl fans with Goth eye makeup, and stitch marks tattooed on their necks … It’s always a risk though, a risk to his ego. What if he underperforms in the sack, or rather – because these girls like a stimulant of moderate discomfort – on a floor, up against a wall, or on a chair with ropes and knots?
For men, the greatest shame of age is sexual dysfunction; for women it is faded beauty. In ‘Dark Lady’, a story that showcases Atwood’s delicious black humour, we follow two elderly siblings: the vain Jorrie, and the gentrified Tin. Every morning, Jorrie reads the papers at the breakfast table, searching for funerals of acquaintances (and enemies).
Tin’s perspective allows us to view Jorrie’s desperate clamour for youthful beauty:
He gazes fondly at Jorrie as she frowns at the obituaries through her crimson-framed reading glasses; or frowns as much as she is able to, given the Botox. In recent years – in recent decades – Jorrie has developed the slightly pop-eyed expression of someone who’s had too much work done. There are hair issues as well. At least he’s been able to stop her from dyeing it to jet black: way too Undead with her present-day skin tone, which is lacking in glow despite the tan-coloured foundation and the sparkly bronze mineral-elements powder she so assiduously applies, the poor deluded wretch.
The story ends with a confrontation at a funeral home, a releasing of old hurts. Jorrie embraces her nemesis, leaving ‘golden scales’ on the other woman’s skin. It is within these scenes, when playfulness and great emotion are held in tension, that Atwood achieves greatness.
In the title story, ‘Stone Mattress’, jaded widow Verna embarks on an Antarctic cruise. She has made a career out of husbands; after seducing old men into marriage, she had enabled the deaths of all three of her husbands with an affectionate and pragmatic hand.
We are given hints of the pseudo-feminine image she projects:
After adding a last film of powder, she rejoins the group and lines up at the buffet for roast beef and salmon. She won’t eat much of it, but then she never does, not in public: a piggy, gobbling woman is not a creature of mysterious allure.
Verna’s appearance is paramount to her:
Thanks to Aquacise and core strength training, she’s still in excellent shape for her age, or indeed for any age, at least when fully clothed and buttressed with carefully fitted underwiring.
Our heroine meets an old enemy on the cruise, and successfully plots vengeance. Atwood’s skill for pace and suspense blossoms here, with a most satisfying climax. Verna is quite familiar with death, despite denying it in her own body.
Stone Mattress is an excellent study of ageing. In it we witness the greatest humiliations: the decay of the body, through appearance, through sexual ability. Through the body’s decay, and interaction with the dead, Atwood never lets us forget: when we reach a certain age, death is always close by.
Margaret Atwood Stone Mattress Bloomsbury 2014 HB 288pp $35.99
A stone cold bibliophile, Lou Heinrich is the Books Editor at @lip_mag. She writes about pop culture and women and drinks too much Earl Grey.
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