From this collection, my favourites are Atwood's (or the child narrator) stories of a youth spent in northern Ontario. Although it couldn't have always been fun, there is freedom and abandon in nature not found in the city. These are contrasted with the adult stories of ambiguous and complicated relationships that seem wanting in satisfaction.
Atwood has a beautiful, vibrant style, and these stories have not aged one bit. ( )

Margaret Atwood is a literary treasure. The flow and poetry of her work is just worlds above most. Bluebeard's Egg is a wonderful collection because it shows that the talent and skill isn't just sequestered to one inspired tail, but that she can recreate magic over and over.

Many of the stories have magic realism. Each has characters that manage to be simultaneously deeply developed and mysterious. Atwood gives the reader windows into each, but keeps some doors locked to give the reader some creative space to make her stories theirs. ( )

Beautifully written, but uneven. The semi-autobiographical tales of a nomadic childhood in post-war Canada that open and close the book are poignant and affecting - subtle, yet heavy with raw emotion and sublime imagery. The rest of the collection - which deals primarily with, (at the time of publication), middle-aged, artsy-yuppie baby-boomers in failing relationships confronting their own mortality - is something of a slog. The characters in these stories - most notably "Uglypuss," and the titular piece - are so selfish, short-sighted and hateful that reading about them borders on excruciating. Perhaps this is the point - one cannot expect all characters to be likable or sympathetic, after all - but in reading these stories, the phrase, "first-world problems," continuously comes to mind. Pretentious, self-obsessed, developmentally arrested artists who treat other people like garbage and/or take their partners for granted does not make for especially engaging literature, particularly when said characters are regularly blindsided by the eye-roll inducingly obvious consequences of their own deplorable behavior. This collection is recommendable for the following pieces: "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother," "Hurricane Hazel," "Betty," and "Unearthing Suite," but overall, it does not rank among Atwood's best. ( )