Monday, December 23, 2024

Book Note (Well, Short Story Note, Really): "Gertrude Talks Back"

Atwood, Margaret. "Gertrude Talks Back." In Good Bones and Simple Murders. Rockland, Massachusettes: Wheeler, 1994.
I recently came across several references to Margaret Atwood's very short short story "Gertrude Talks Back." I was able to track it down in a collection of mostly similarly short short stories, and I enjoyed it immensely. 

The setting seems to be, generally, during the closet scene—Hamlet's "Leave wringing of your hands" (III.iv.33) is delightful recalled in Gertrude's line "I am not wringing my hands. I'm drying my nails."

According to Bardfilm's Fair Use Policy, I'm not providing it in its entirety, but I'm giving you the first page of two. I'm pretty confident that you'll want to find the rest and finish it on your own. You won't want to leave these thoughts unfinished.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the opening of "Gertrude Talks Back."

Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).





Copyright 2008-2039 by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

 —The Tempest