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© 2000 Kathy Craig |
The Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood
November 2002
Synopsis
"Margaret Atwood takes the art of storytelling to new heights in a dazzling new novel that unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist.
For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious.
The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: 'Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge.' They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a- novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.
Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms and clichés of the 1930s and 1940s, The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience. The novel has many threads and a series of events that follow one another at a breathtaking pace. As everything comes together, readers will discover that the story Atwood is telling is not only what it seems to be--but, in fact, much more. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic." (Publisher)
Reviews
- "The Blind Assassin has enough mysteries to keep even a casual reader engaged, and with respect to solutions, it is less scrupulously committed to ambiguity than Ms. Atwood's 1997 novel, Alias Grace. As with all of Ms. Atwood's recent fiction, The Blind Assassin, despite what sounds like a romantic plot, has been scoured free of any trace of sentimentality. There is a steely quality to Ms. Atwood's writing that's a bit scary but also exhilarating; no one gets away with anything, especially not her female narrators--and they know better than to try."
(Laura Miller - Wall Street Journal)
- "A literary high-wire act . . . Big and Ambitious . . . A sweeping family saga." (Newsweek)
- "Brilliant . . . Opulent . . . Atwood is a poet . . . as well as a contriver of fiction, and scarcely a sentence of her quick, dry yet avid prose fails to do useful work, adding to a picture that becomes enormous." (John Updike, The New Yorker)
Book Club Rating and Comments
If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.
Other Books by Margaret Atwood
- 'Alias Grace' (January 1998)
- 'Bluebeard's Egg'
- 'Bodily Harm'
- 'Cat's Eye'
- 'Dancing Girls'
- 'The Edible Woman'
- 'Good Bones and Simple Murders'
- 'The Handmaid's Tale'
- 'Lady Oracle'
- 'Life Before Man'
- 'Murder in the Dark'
- 'The Robber Bride'
- 'Surfacing'
- 'Wilderness Tips'