There is a double standard here. For, in the end, the central problem of this collection is the way it handles its own formalities. A key example is Atwood's ambiguous, and earnest, use of the second person. At times, the "you" seems to be gesturing towards an audience within the text. Elsewhere, it seems more accusatory, directed at the reader. And, on occasion, the "you" seems turned towards an implied, floating, author. All are forms of pseudo-intimacy. Rather like the signomotron, they appear to draw us in, but end up highlighting distance.

Writing so bare of reference and referent risks a sort of sentimentality, a relishing of its own bleakness. As with a guru's gnomic utterances, or a Zen koan, one can be left wondering over a vacuum. But there is another piece of sentiment at play here. Despite repeatedly unwriting the story, and dramatizing distance, the collection clings to a conviction of its own timeliness. This is evident in a number of tales which touch on wildlife, or globalization. The final tale, "But It Could Still", was written for a volume sold in aid of the Tsunami victims; in "this dim season of the year", its voice notes, "we hunger for" tales which speak of new life. We are offered one such tale: "Though you nearly froze your fingers off, you did get the tulips planted just in time. In the brown earth there were already hundreds of small green shoots". This image of rebirth is followed by an attempt to continue the plot. "What would you call them if they were in a story?", we are asked. "Would they be happy endings, or happy beginnings?" The tale concludes: "But they aren't in a story, and neither are you. You tucked them under the mulch and the dead leaves, however. It seemed the right thing to do on the darkest day of the year".

It is hard to determine the impact of this accusatory paradox. One is left wondering whether being "in a story" is something to be desired or resisted.

Ultimately, one is left wondering whether, with this "you", Atwood is honestly turning on herself, or her own activist meta- narrative. In the end, while The Tent displays little but suspicion of what Margaret Atwood has termed the "low art of storytelling", there is still a rooted belief in doing the "right thing". It makes for a dark, intriguing, but ultimately bewildering examination of worth and worthiness, in which the short story feels as if it has been stripped to "brown earth".