"Moral Disorder," by Margaret Atwood

When I was about to go on a car trip recently, I followed my usual habit in such cases of going to the library to find a good audiobook to accompany me on the trip and make the time go faster. This time I found Margaret Atwood’s 2006 story collection, “Moral Disorder” (Books on Tape). As I was listening, I remembered a couple of the stories from earlier readings, but some seemed new to me. In any case, it is a wonderful collection of somewhat interconnected stories, and echoes some of the events of Atwood’s own life, including her childhood as the daughter of an entomologist who often took his family when he did fieldwork deep in the forests of Ontario and Quebec, giving his children much freedom there. The stories deal with marriage, broken families, reconstructed families, memory, secret lives and hopes, mental illness, farming, city versus country, the powerful effect of one’s housing, fragility and strength, adaptation, acceptance and much more. The stories are about both the everyday and the philosophical aspects of life. As always, Atwood has a unique, piercing, yet forgiving style of observation and writing voice.