SOURCE: “The Atwood Variations,” in Times Literary Supplement, November 6, 1992, p. 20.

In the following review, Kemp praises Good Bones as a “sample-case of Atwood's sensuous and sardonic talents.”

Pocket-sized and with sturdy covers, Good Bones looks a bit like a sketchbook in which an artist might jot caricatures, cartoons, preliminary studies, trial pieces and quick little exercises in catching the essence of a subject or delineating it from unusual angles. The miscellany with which Margaret Atwood fills its pages is, in fact, a writer's equivalent of this: a collection of lively verbal doodlings, smartly dashed off vignettes and images that are inventively enlarged, tilted, turned upside down. Playing with the conventions of her narrative craft is a frequent pastime. Fiction's motives and motifs are outlined with witty flourish.

“Bad News,” the opening piece, is a fantasia about the appeal of disaster tales. It's followed by a monologue in which...