Review: Moral Disorder

Margaret Atwood’s 2006 short story collection is as broad, sprawling and internally conflicted as its central character. Nell. But how can a collection of short stories have a central character, I hear you say? Well, with Atwood nothing is ever straight forward. And so it is with Moral Disorder in which we are told a series of short stories from, what initially seems like, various 1st-person perspectives. Atwood carefully conceals the time, place and identity of many of the narrators in these stories – insisting, instead, that you slowly piece it together through diligent appreciation of the person’s character, psychology and behaviour. A process which is fun and irritating in equal measures, much like a challenging crossword.

Typical of Atwood, all the stories here are centred on women. The characters are deeply fleshed-out, so much so that they seem more real to you, by the time you get to the last page, than the people you know in reality. And it is this willful suppression of our true minds, especially from those most close to us, that is the central theme of the novel. A truly timeless theme.

Unfortunately, the brilliance of Atwood’s psychologically insightful stream-of-consciousness style and penetration into the hear of the human condition is marred by her gyno-centrism. All her female characters are so well drawn that they transcend the page, but when it comes to male characters (whether minor of major) she stoops to cliche’ and generalisation. Much of this could be forgiven in the stories that centre upon the narrator’s experiences as a young woman, but not so when she has grown older and supposedly wiser. Such parochialism can be effective character development, but not so when we are dealing with a character who is delivering great insight about the changes in the world around her. When the narrator has reached the almost omnipotent insight of her twilight years, it is simply unbelievable. And you cannot exuse it as a willful omission, without having to concede that Atwood is guilty of the ultimate feminist hyprocrisy.