SOURCE: “Versions of Reality,” in Violent Duality: A Study of Margaret Atwood, edited by Ken Norris, Véhicule Press, 1980, pp. 79–86.

In the following excerpt, Grace finds parallels between Atwood's stories and her poetry and assesses the merits and weaknesses of the stories in Dancing Girls.

Jeannie isn't real in the same way that I am real. But by now, and I mean your time, both of us will have the same degree of reality, we will be equal: wraiths, echoes, reverberations in your own brain.

(“Giving birth,” DG, p. 242)

The price of this version of reality was testing the other one.

(EW, p. 271)

In an effort to distinguish between creating a poem and a novel, Atwood has remarked:

You can talk about it, but not very successfully. A poem is something you hear, and the primary focus of interest is words. A novel is something you see, and...