Dancing Girls - by Margaret Atwood (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In this splendid volume of short fiction from the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, ordinary people--farmers, birdwatchers, adolescent lovers, elderly neighbors, pregnant women--are anything but ordinary.

A poet waylaid by an epic nosebleed; an awkward student trailed by an obtuse stalker; a jaded travel writer stranded on a life raft, finally facing a situation she can't trivialize: these characters touch us deeply, evoking laughter, terror, and compassion. Punctuated by brilliant flashes of fantasy, humor, and occasional violence, Dancing Girls pays tribute to the sheer variety and complexity of human relationships.

Review Quotes

"Sheer wizardry, a rich fusion of the ordinary experience made brilliant by symbol, image, and allusion." --Los Angeles Times

"Atwood renders visual, aural, and tactile events in such crisp, surprising language that her images crackle off the page." --The Washington Post

"A stunning collection. . . . Combine[s] superb control and selectivity with an almost rambunctious vitality." --The New York Times Book Review

"Superb control and selectivity, with an almost rambunctious vitality. . . . A stunning collection."
--The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

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.