Moral Disorder

Just finished Margaret Atwood's Moral Disorder - not quite a novel, but a collection of interconnected stories that form a loose but cohesive whole. The stories all involve a central character called Nell, though some stories are written in the first person and it is not immediately apparent that they are about the same person. It took a while for me to catch on to this. The stories cover different stages of Nell's life, beginning with her in old age and then jumping back to her childhood and following her through her adolescence, adulthood, facing her parents' old age. The stories depict Nell's relationships with her parents, husband, and sister, and with the natural world. The book feels like being inside very personal memories. I've always loved Atwood's writing - honest, unsentimental - sometimes very unsettling.