The New Yorker gets in the holiday mood with a story about date-rape and murder

Well The New Yorker gets right into the holiday spirit with Margaret Atwood's grim little story about an abuse victim turned murderer - think of what you might get if you cross-bred an Alice Munro story with a Joyce Carol Oates story and it's this, Stone Mattresses. Like everything Atwood writes, it's well crafted and compelling in its way and provocative - I'm just not sure what it provokes. Story is narrated by a woman about to go on an Arctic cruise, where she at first vows not to flirt but immediately begins eyeing the men and looking for not a mate but for a victim - & and it turns out, quel chance!, that the first guy who sidles up to her is the very guy who 50 years or so back had taken her, than a shy and sheltered young teen, to a dance and brutally raped her - and, in a Hardyesque turn, she got pregnant, was sent away to a home, where to she gave birth - and then went onto a life that consists of a series of marriages and then easing her husbands toward death (too much or too little meds, etc.) - after this longish Munro-like digression into that tale of young troubled woman coming of age in small Canada town, we get onto the main story, in which narrator, Verna, deftly lays a plan to avenge her wrong by bashing in her suitor's head with a rock. As she says, she's read a lot of crime novels. But is this crime credible? And, more to the point, what does Atwood expect us to think about this act of vengeance? No doubt the guy deserved it - 50 years ago - and no doubt all of us have had vengeance fantasies, but honestly, is this civilized behavior in any way? By the way, I think Jonathan Franzen's treatment of this issue - date-rape and its aftermath - in Freedom, was very effective, much more sensitive and sensible, and much more credible. But this story may be a jolt of catharsis for some, even as it will horrify others. Happy Holidays!