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    Two Scorched Men
    Two Scorched Men
    Two Scorched Men
    Audiobook51 minutes

    Two Scorched Men

    Written by Margaret Atwood

    Narrated by Carol Jacobanis

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Margaret Atwood needs little introduction. If you don’t know her from her fifty-plus books and many awards and bestsellers, including her MaddAddam Trilogy, Alias Grace, and especially The Handmaid’s Tale, you’ll know her from that visionary and canonical novel’s adaptation into the Emmy-winning Hulu television series. At eighty-one, Atwood is more current and influential than ever, and with more than two million followers on Twitter, she’s achieved a kind of cool generally reserved for rock stars. (Bob Dylan’s got nothing on her.)

    In her Scribd Original story Two Scorched Men, Atwood takes a personal turn and returns to characters and places drawn from her own life. Her unnamed narrator pays tribute in fictional form to two men Atwood knew during the years she and her partner, Graeme Gibson, spent in Provence: John, a hotheaded Irishman who served in the Royal Navy during World War II and barely survived the deadly battles in the South Pacific; and François, a wry and affable Frenchman, who was once an operative in the French Resistance and led a life shaped by tragedy. As Atwood writes here, both men knew “I would someday relate their lives for them. Why did they want this? Why does anyone? We resist the notion that we’ll become mere handfuls of dust, so we wish to become words instead. Breath in the mouths of others.”

    Breathed into rich and dimensional life in these pages is the exquisite yet vaguely haunted house that the narrator and her husband, Tig, rented from John; the adjacent ancient forest and its allures and dangers; the rough country roads walked and retraced in dreams; the bloody history of the south of France, including the atrocities visited on medieval heretics and, centuries later, the guerrilla fighters who murdered Germans in an effort to free France from occupation. But at the center of the story is the touching friendship between John and François: how they indulge each other’s eccentricities and forgive each other their faults and psychic scars. With great precision and affection are their voices inhabited: John’s uproarious rants at human foolishness, his boasts about his playboy days as an advertising man, and a tempestuousness that so clearly covers for wounds that may never heal. By contrast, François is given to teasing misdirections and wordplay in the name of fun and a love of the absurd that draws everyone in. Tig, the husband of the narrator and a character so often featured in Atwood’s stories, speaks here as well. Practical, he’s a voice of reason and anchors the story’s narrator, much as John and François anchor one another in the world.

    In these enduring and endearing relationships, so much of Atwood’s art and wisdom are on display: how ably she balances life’s inevitable injuries with beauty and humor, the pain of loss with the curative powers of the imagination. What better time in Atwood’s creative life—in fact, in our collective lives post a global pandemic—to accept that none of us gets out of life unscathed, that we are all mortal, perfectly imperfect, but that there is solace in friendship and laughter in remembering? Indelible detail by detail, sentence by sentence, Atwood is instructing her reader on resilience. We do what we can for each other, she tells us here, and thank goodness for that.

    Editor's Note

    Restorative power…

    Literary icon Margaret Atwood (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) celebrates the restorative power of friendship in this semi-autobiographical story of two old buddies in Provence, France. The bond between John, a fiery Irishman prone to rants and “Mad Men”-esque boasts, and François, a warm, pun-loving Frenchman with a tragic past, is a timely reminder of how human connections get us through rough times.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEverand Originals
    Release dateJul 30, 2021
    ISBN9781094424668
    Author

    Margaret Atwood

    Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in more than forty-five countries, is the author of over fifty books, including fiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, now an award-winning television series, her works include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; The MaddAddam Trilogy; The Heart Goes Last; Hag-Seed; The Testaments, which won the Booker Prize and was long-listed for the Giller Prize; and the poetry collection Dearly. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in Great Britain for her services to literature. She lives in Toronto.

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    Reviews for Two Scorched Men

    3.5/5

    461 ratings24 reviews

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    • 4/5
      It was simple memories simply shared
      Hee voice is easy to listen to
    • 5/5
      Great storytelling! Loved how words were pronounced . Thanks again for reading
    • 5/5
      Great I loved it. Recommend this to my friends to read
    • 3/5
      Atwood always delivers with a great narrative.
      The story in this book is short but not simple at all. The two men she tells us about are complicated and have led complicated and eventful lives. I really enjoyed the story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      It’s a beautiful novella and a great narration. I love Margaret Atwood. ❤️❤️❤️????

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      It’s like listening to your grandmother telling a story to you.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Very descriptive depiction of complicated people. I particularly enjoyed the phase, “cold blooded bravery” as a way to define one of the characters.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Great reading of a story about grumpy veterans postwar years

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Was excited to read a Margaret Atwood, but not sure what the point of this book was...

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Witty tale of two elderly veterans WWII. Engaging story. Author presents as a young companion who is writing postmortem accounts for these gentleman.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Very funny and super entertaining, a great quick read when you’re bored. Accents were slightly cringy though.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Not my favourite Atwood offering. I found it a little boring.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Hate to admit but have no idea what it was about. Am I obtuse or what…

      5 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      What in the world? What did I miss? I missed the point.

      6 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Two old men united by the friendship and the survivence. They lived in the French south. Both were vets of the WWII. The story of two men deafeted by the life, the story of their friendship.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      This audiobook is boring in spite of favorable reviews.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      “I used to believe that having a good memory was a blessing, but I am no longer sure. Maybe forgetting is the blessing.”

      4 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I have read the book, the audiobook is just as amazing!!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Short and sweet. Good sense of humor. I liked the way it was narrated, voices implied. Profound observations.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Interesting characters brought to life by a masterful storyteller. My husband and I listened after morning coffee, our eyes shut the better to *see* the wonderfully descriptive prose. We were not disappointed!

      3 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Yes, often the best of experience, the best of imagination must percolate slowly through the strata of days and years before they demand to be dealt with.

      In “Two Scorched Men,” there are details within details, though it seems Atwood isn’t feeling obliged to show the men deep attention. The words came to the page as generously as the characters gave of themselves to be known—building to heights then thinning to lows of long distance. I enjoyed the double entendre, nested puns, and language that does not hold a single apology for its inclusion.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      No sale opción español,por eso doy 1 estrella,gracias,gracias, gracias ?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Exceptional story, exceptional story telling! Brava! It was enchanting. Carol Jacobanis puts you right there. Encore s’il vous plaît.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I enjoyed listening to this short fiction story. Great book!

      2 people found this helpful