Death By Landscape by Margaret Atwood, 1989
The magic trick:
Setting the story at summer camp
There are several excellent stories that find adults sorting through tragedies they experienced as children and now they’re still trying to figure out what happened. Andrew Porter’s “Hole” and Alice Munro’s “Gravel” and Susan Choi’s “Flashlight” spring to mind. I think “Death By Landscape” is my favorite of the bunch. It’s such a good story.
There are so many reasons this story stands out – the artful way the mystery is left hanging; the even more artful breadcrumbs Atwood drops throughout the story that allow the reader to analyze the mystery in a pretty deeply psychological way.
But here’s the other thing – and maybe it’s the main thing for me: the story is set at a summer camp. I don’t know what it is. It’s just like the ultimate setting for nostalgia mixed with fear. So I was already hooked. The rest of the story’s artistry was just a bonus.
And that’s quite a trick on Atwood’s part.
The selection:
Lois realized later that it must have been a struggle for Cappie to keep Camp Manitou going during the Depression and then the war, when money did not flow freely. If it had been a camp for the very rich, instead of the merely well-off, there would have been fewer problems. But there must have been enough Old Girls, ones with daughters, to keep the thing in operation, though not entirely shipshape: Furniture was battered: painted trim was peeling, roofs leaked. There were dim photographs of these Old Girls dotted around the dining hall, wearing ample woolen bathing suits and showing their fat, dimpled legs, or standing, arms twined, in odd tennis outfits with baggy skirts.
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