"In fifteen stories, Margaret Atwood explores the warp and weft of experience with her characteristic insight and humour--from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking, to a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch. They feature beloved cats, a confused snail, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, philosopher-astronomer-mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, a cabal of elderly female academics, and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales. Bookending the collection is a sequence of profoundly moving and tender stories that follow a married couple, casting light on the moments big and small that make up a life of uncommon love--and what comes after. The glorious range of Atwood's creativity and humanity is on full beam in these tales, which by turns quietly devastate, illuminate, delight, and entertain." - Cover.

I: Tig & Nell: First aid -- Two scorched men -- Morte de Smudgie -- II: My evil mother: My evil mother -- The dead interview -- Impatient Griselda -- Bad teeth -- Death by clamshell -- Freeforall -- Metempsychosis: or, journey of the soul -- Airborne: a symposium -- III: Nell & Tig: A dusty lunch -- Widows -- Wooden box -- Old babes in the wood.