Marcia will get a little drunk on the eggnog, and later, after the dishes are done, she will cry silently to herself, shut into the bathroom and hugging in her festive arms the grumbling cat, which she will have dragged out from under a bed for this purpose. She will cry because the children are no longer children, or because she herself is not a child any more, or because there are children who have never been children, or because she can't have a child any more, ever again. Her body has gone past too quickly for her; she has not made herself ready.
It's all this talk of babies, at Christmas. It's all this hope. She gets distracted by it, and has trouble paying attention to the real news.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
"The Age of Lead" previously appeared in Toronto Life (Canada), Lear's Magazine (U.S.), Neue Rundschau (Germany), The New Statesman (U.K.), Colours of a New Day (U.K.), Good Housekeeping Magazine (Australia); "The Bog Man" in Playboy (U.S.); "Death by Landscape" in Saturday Night (Canada), Harper's (U.S.), New Woman (U.K.); "Hack Wednesday" in The New Yorker (U.S.); "Hairball" in The New Yorker (U.S.), under the title "Kat"; "Isis in Darkness" in Granta (U.K.); "True Trash" in Saturday Night (Canada); "Weight" in Chatelaine (Canada), Cosmopolitan (U.K.), Vogue (U.S.); "Wilderness Tips" in Saturday Night (Canada), The New Yorker (U.S.); "Uncles" in Saturday Night (Canada).
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939, and grew up in northern Quebec and Ontario, and later in Toronto. She has lived in numerous cities in Canada, the U.S., and Europe.
She is the author of more than forty books - novels, short stories, poetry, literary criticism, social history, and books for children.
Atwood's work is acclaimed internationally and has been published around the world. Her novels include The Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye - both shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Robber Bride; Alias Grace, winner of the prestigious Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy, and a finalist for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize and a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and Oryx and Crake, a finalist for The Giller Prize and the Man Booker Prize. Her most recent book of fiction is Moral Disorder. Atwood is the recipient of numerous honours, such as the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence in the U.K., the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature in the U.S., Le Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and she was the first winner of the London Literary Prize. She has received honorary degrees from universities across Canada, and one from Oxford University in England.
Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson.
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