“The Freeze-Dried Groom” by Margaret Atwood was one of those stories that kept getting stranger and stranger. Each turn managed to be a surprise, even though the title of the story gave away the biggest twist of all. As I was reading I was impressed with the creativity of Atwood to have so many different plot points in a story. It started out with a couple divorcing and it seemed like it was going to be a simple love story. Then it turned out that Sam is some kind of sketchy furniture dealer and he was using his wife for her money. Then we assume he’s a drug dealer and he’s involved in storage unit auctions. Then he finds a dead body. Then he meets the woman who was responsible for the dead body. Then instead of running away like a sane person, he meets her at a motel. I’m not trying to summarize the story, I’m just pointing out the strange twists of the story that Atwood keeps introducing but manages to relate all the plot points together.

Ben is not at all a sympathetic character but he’s still enjoyable to read about. Atwood seems to be skilled at creating characters who are unlikable in many ways but still compelling for the reader. In the case of Ben, Atwood might achieve this by making Gwyneth unsympathetic as well. We only see her through the eyes of Ben but her actions are cold and distant, perhaps warranted, but still don’t make her a warm and likable character. In this way, Ben’s actions towards her don’t make us, the readers, hate him.  If Gwyneth had been a completely charismatic character that the reader loved, Ben might never have been redeemable enough to care about.

There’s a great voice behind the character Ben. When he talks about the auctioneer, he’s bitter and rude but funny in a dark way and that seems very true to his character. He puts importance on things like doughnut holes and car brands. He sees someone else has doughnut holes and then needs to get his own. It seems very true to character. I think Atwood has done a good job of making Ben seem real and believable, despite the rather unbelievable experience he is going through.

On that note, Atwood also does a good job of creating a character who reacts in a pretty subtle way to finding a dead body in a storage unit. It helps that he is doing illegal things as well in the same storage unit so it’s not like he can call the cops. He’s also getting out of a very boring, mundane relationship, which would explain why he’s excited by a murderer. Atwood sets up a lot of plot points that allow for Ben to not freak out about a dead body/murderer and then call the cops.