Wilderness Tips: Mapping the jungle of life
Written: Sep 13 '01 (Updated Oct 20 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fine, precise writing, engrossing characters.
Cons: No cons here.
The Bottom Line: A stunning collection of tales about intelligent women in complex situations. No false notes, no wasted words. Buy it and savor it over and over. 5 stars.
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| tomgray's Full Review: Wilderness Tips Books |
The book shed does it again.
Our town dump maintains a free book exchange--what a concept! Hours of free entertainment, if only from the browsing, and then there is the occasional gem that turns up, introducing me to a new (for me) author at an irresistible price.
A few weeks ago, it was a copy of Annie Proulx' The Shipping News, which I must get around to reviewing here one of these days. But this time, heaven's bounty is a stained and water-damaged (but still quite readable!) copy of Margaret Atwood's Wilderness Tips, a collection of beautifully-wrought stories about intelligent women and their lives and times.
(I must say irreverently that Wilderness Tips reminds me of a cartoon I saw once, with two pie charts depicting the minds of Men and Women. The man's pie chart was dominated by the classic troika of sex, food, and sports, in roughly equal proportions, plus a few tiny slivers for computers, do-it-yourself projects, and so on. The woman's? Slivers for most of the items in the man's pie, larger pieces for Clothes and Makeup, and a huge segment titled The Relationship that consumed more than half of the whole.)
Atwood's stories, for the most part, are about The Relationship and have a feminist twist, although there is at least one environmental one and another about summer camp. I found them quite engrossing--Atwood is skilled at sketching complex, multi-layered characters and interesting situations.
Here, for example, one will find:
* The unnamed female narrator of "Weight," witty and self-assured, who is soliciting a major charitable contribution from a businessman for a shelter for battered spouses. The twist? Well, for one thing, the charity is named for Molly, a good friend of the narrator's who was beaten to death. But "Weight" is not just a rampage against men, as one might receive from a lesser author--in fact, the narrator, a consummate if depressed realist, is considering an affair with the prospective donor even as she works him over for a check: . . . Molly didn't hate men. With men, Molly was a toad-kisser. She thought any toad could be turned into a prince if he was only kissed enough, by her. I was different. I knew a toad was a toad and would remain so. The thing was to find the most congenial among the toads and learn to appreciate their finer points. You had to develop an eye for warts. I called this compromise. Molly called it cynicism.
* Susanna, the focus of "Uncles," raised in a family with several beefy, affectionate uncles who doted on her. Used to being the focus of attention, she is able to make her way in the business world by finding a knowledgeable fellow worker who treats her much as her uncles did--only to turn on her after she becomes a success.
* Richard, the central figure in "Isis in Darkness," a once-hopeful poet overawed by a woman who is the genuine article, but little-recognized (in this Richard is perhaps a bit like Salieri contemplating Mozart in Amadeus, though he is by no means as well-known as Salieri): Dead poets were his business, living ones his vice. Much of the stuff he read was crap and he knew it; still, it gave him an odd lift. Then there would be the occasional real poem, and he would catch his breath. Nothing else could drop him through space like that, then catch him; nothing else could peel him open. Sometimes these poems were Selena's. He would read them, and part of him--a small, constricted part--would hope for some lapse, some decline; but she just got better. She drifts in and out of his life over the years, and in the end he is faced with the elusive goal of summing up her significance for him and for others, like an Egyptologist sifting the remains of a ruined temple.
* Julie, a 20-year-old who has an affair with a middle-aged, married archaeologist in "The Bog Man," in part because she fell in love with his voice, rich and rough-edged, persuasive and abraded, rising and falling in the darkness like a stroking, insistent hand while he showed slides of Celtic tombs. "The Bog Man" chronicles the gradual dissipation and mummification of their romance.
Wilderness Tips, as the above excerpts indicate, is artfully polished, and I especially enjoyed the worldly ironic, sometimes mocking, tone in which much of it is written. 10 stories, 297 pages. Highly recommended.
Writing: 9
Characterization: 10
Big Issues/Ideas: 10
Recommended reading: If you like Wilderness Tips, try the works of Marge Piercy, in particular He, She, and It*, a thoughtful, extremely well-written meditation on the creation of an artificial man, and Woman on the Edge of Time, in which the protagonist is shuttled back and forth between visions of alternate futures and is ultimately forced to make a terrible choice.
*I've also reviewed He, She, and It for Epinions.com:
http://www.epinions.com/book-review-5DB5-6490DBA-37FB3BE4-bd1
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
tomgray
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Member: Tom Gray
Location: Norwich, Vermont
Reviews written: 160
Trusted by: 231 members
About Me:
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