STORY 14. "HAPPY ENDINGS" BY MARGARET ATWOOD

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, inventor, and environmental activist. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award several times, winning twice. In 2001, she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. She is also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community. Among innumerable contributions to Canadian literature, she was a founding trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize.

She is seen as one of the world’s leading women novelists, for some the best of them all; she has written poetry, novels, criticism and short stories; she campaigns for human rights and for the environment. 

Nonetheless, across the years, certain themes, concerns and ways of writing recur. Amongst other things, Atwood writes about art and its creation, the dangers of ideology, and sexual politics; she deconstructs myths, fairytales and the classics for a new audience. 

"Happy Endings" was first published in a 1983 Canadian collection, Murder in the Dark.^[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood

"Happy Endings" is an example of metafiction. That is, it's a story that comments on the conventions of storytelling and draws attention to itself as a story. At approximately 1,300 words, it's also an example of flash fiction. "Happy Endings" was first published in 1983.

The story is actually six stories in one. Atwood begins by introducing the two main characters, John and Mary, and then offers six different versions -- labeled A through F -- of who they are and what might happen to them.

https://www.thoughtco.com/margaret-atwoods-happy-endings-analysis-2990463