Dark and witty tales from the gleefully inventive Margaret Atwood … Witty verve, imaginative inventiveness and verbal sizzle vivify every page

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

Atwood illuminates heavy themes with a lightness of touch, giving insight not only into the nature of stone but the trials and tribulations of flesh and blood

Anita Sethi, Observer

This collection of short stories is charged with a delightful cheekiness … Atwood has characters here close to death, dead already, unwittingly doomed or – in one memorable case – freeze-dried; but her own curiosity, enthusiasm and sheer storytelling panache remain alive and kicking. Anyone keen to consign literary fiction to an early grave will have to deal with her first

Independent

What does it mean to be a woman today? Many writers have made this fertile ground their home, but few have been able to lay such enduring claim to it as Margaret Atwood … Her latest work, Stone Mattress, a collection of nine acerbic, mischievous, gulpable short stories, addresses themes that will resonate with anyone familiar with Atwood's writing … Atwood's gimlet eye and sharp tongue are turned on the ageing process to painfully accurate effect

Harper's Bazaar

With death tapping at her characters' doors in more ways than one, Atwood shows herself, through these exquisitely inhabited inner lives and darkly funny stories, to be pulsing with more imaginative vivacity than ever

Literary Review

Here it is again, the sharp-clawed, gimlet-eyed, takes-no-prisoners Atwood whose humour is wickedly enjoyable … But there is beauty in this writing as well as harsh observational gems, and Atwood creates atmosphere with loving care, from the first sentence of the first story

Herald