SOURCE: “A Poet's Bones,” in Canadian Literature, Vols. 138–139, Fall, 1993, pp. 105–06

In the following laudatory review of Good Bones, Besner deems the stories in the collection as “fictions for our time, and, arguably, fictions that show Atwood's narrative talents at their finest.”

Because Atwood is a better poet than a fiction writer, I have always read her novels and short stories with grudging admiration. Yes, I teach The Handmaid's Tale and The Edible Woman, and I recognize the ways in which these and other Atwood novels are exciting in the classroom and out of it, but I would much rather read, teach, talk about her poems.

That this view should run against the rising tide of Atwood's reputation as a novelist might only reflect on the increasingly rarefied readership of poetry in Canada outside of academic circles (increasingly rarefied, it almost seems, in inverse proportion to the rising number...