Old Babes in the Wood

Chapter 1

i

TIG & NELL

first aid

Nell came home one day just before dinnertime and found the front door open. The car was gone. There was a trail of blood splotches on the steps, and once she was inside the house, she followed it along the hall carpet and into the kitchen. There was a knife on the cutting board, one of Tig s favourites, Japanese steel, very sharp and beside it, a bloodstained carrot, one end severed. Their daughter, nine at the time, was nowhere to be found.

What were the possible scenarios? Desperadoes had broken in. Tig had tried to defend himself against them, using the knife (though how to explain the carrot?), and had been wounded. The desperadoes had made off with him, their daughter, and their car. Nell should call the police.

Or else Tig had been cooking, had sliced himself with the knife, had judged that he needed stitches, and had driven himself to the hospital, taking their daughter with him to avoid leaving her by herself. This was more likely. He must have been in too much of a hurry to leave a note.

Nell got out the bottle of carpet cleaner and sprayed the blood spots: they would be much harder to get out once they d dried. Then she wiped the blood off the kitchen floor and, after a pause, off the carrot. It was a perfectly good carrot; no need for it to go to waste.

Time passed. Suspense built. She was at the point of phoning all the hospitals in the vicinity to see if Tig was there when he came back, hand bandaged. He was in a jovial mood, as was their daughter. What an adventure they d had! The blood was just pouring out, they reported. The tea towel Tig had used for wrapping the cut had been soaked! Yes, driving had been a challenge, said Tig he didn t say dangerous but who could wait for a taxi, and he d managed all right with basically just one hand since he d needed to keep the other one raised, and the blood was trickling off his elbow, and they d sewn him up quickly at the hospital because he was

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade.

Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

There are authors we turn to because they can uncannily predict our future; there are authors we need for their skillful diagnosis of our present; and there are authors we love because they can explain our past. And then there are the outliers: those who gift us with timelines other than the one we re stuck in, realities far from home. If anyone has proved, over the course of a long and wildly diverse career, that she can be all four, it s Margaret Atwood. Long may she reign...If you consider yourself an Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You ve been missing out.
Rebecca Makkai, New York Times Book Review

Old Babes in the Wood is touching, smart, funny, and unique in equal measure A dazzling mixture of stories that explore what it means to be human while also showcasing Atwood's gifted imagination and great sense of humor.
NPR

These fifteen stories are a master class in how to write, a rollicking good time, and a deep exploration of human relationships the damage we do to each other and the ways we come together. Delving into Atwood s work feels a bit like coming home you can trust her to tell a good story and not make any gaffes along the way.
Brooklyn Rail

"Atwood explores love and loss in this brilliant collection that mixes fantastical stories about the afterlife with realism...She s writing at the top of her considerable powers here."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The celebrated author s first collection of short fiction since Stone Mattress (2014)...Honest and artful depictions of aging and loss."
Kirkus