The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

An old woman acerbically ponders her tragic life

This novel is about the life of Iris Chase Griffen, told in bits and pieces, narrative chunks.  The story begins with a fusillade of three deaths, proceeding in alternating sections to tell the tale of Iris’s early life as a sheltered rich girl in Port Ticonderoga (the other Ticonderoga thank you), fragments from a strange fantastical tale a man tells a woman during their Toronto assignations, and scenes from Iris’s elderly life as she views her garden through the changing Canadian seasons.

This book was difficult to read quickly because I wanted to savor each sentence.  Though this was the third time I had read this novel, the prose seemed more beautiful than ever.  The rhythms of the short sentences are amazing. The humor comes from the fancy pants high lyrical voice contrasted with the deadpan rhythm of the deflating commonplace phrases. I loved the right hand/left hand imagery.

The insights into human nature aren’t that spectacular, but the narrative tricks sort of are. This is a Romance with a capital R.  The plot is intricate, and can support a lot, but sags a little with the energetic yet cartoonish villainy of the brother and sister, Richard and Winifred.   The last fifth is both baggy and rushed.  Iris’s motivations are a little hard to figure out. She's very passive.  Laura, Iris’s sister, seems more Aspergery than tragic, but that’s probably the point.  Perhaps ultimately love stories have small stakes.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

A story about a woman telling a story about a murder

This historical novel tells the story of Grace Marks who was convicted of the murders of her employer and his lover in 1840's Canada.  Did she do it or not?

I'm not sure if this was my cup of tea. Stabbing, Strangling, Shooting and Dismemberment. These don’t seem like the favorite subjects of the presumed murderess Grace as well, since she can’t remember the murders and would really rather forget. I was bored at times as I felt I had to wade through too much regurgitated research to get to the forward moving part of the story. Sometimes only the beautifully written descriptions kept me plodding on. Grace is just too passive, the typical tongueless Atwood heroine. Or is she a crazy liar? I did like the multiplicity of voices and the structure of the quilt patterns. And I loved the difference between Grace’s thoughts and Grace’s uneducated letters.

The best parts of the book actually, were the parts with lots of blood and the parts that take place in the godforsaken house in the middle of nowhere. The house with all the passions. Women don’t fare well in this novel at the hands of men who expect too much saintliness or too much villainy. The other main character is a Mama’s boy doctor (another passive character actually) who wants to “save” Grace. The tension between the two starts off strong but then gets frittered away somehow. I think part of the problem is that he’s too much of a straw man.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Who is the Blind Assassin?


I liked this so much that when I got to the end, I started right up again on page one. I needed to figure out the puzzle. Even though during the second go round, the story grew a little creaky and some squashed bunnies and doves were visible. This novel works on many levels. A love story, a puzzle, a history of Canada between the wars, an study of old age, a science fiction novel, and a really funny satire of many different types of public communication – PTA notes, obituaries, political speeches, the social pages. It’s a story about storytelling and it never grew boring for me as I found the sentences and the words themselves endlessly inventive.


It a story about Iris and her sister Laura, two poor little rich girls and their involvement with two rather thinly sketched out men – one a revolutionary, one an industrialist. The puzzle part is that we have to piece the story together from little chunks, a few pages of narrative. Many many characters – for the most part, fully realized. At heart Atwood is a poet, as the engine of the story is sentimental claptrap. But the story is driven by the narrator’s great yearning - for her lover, for her sister. I am going to read it again.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Mother earth shrugs off most of humanity (with a hand from a mad scientist) – are we worth saving completely?

The book was packed with ideas and theories. We’re killing the earth, and therefore killing ourselves. It might not be good idea for corporations to modify DNA for profit. To refuse to conform might mean you might have to go underground. This book is two things at once – a political tract and a novel. Unfortunately, the novel part , or at least the plotting, breaks down at the end. Are we supposed to believe that 6 billion people on earth get wiped out by a virus and the 20 people remaining (who all know each other) coincidentally keep bumping into each other? The description of the God’s Gardener’s (the environmental church’s) way of life was absorbing and I liked the way a new vocabulary weaves its way naturally into the story (and maybe into real life discourse as well). I also liked that the book was structured around the religious hymns of the God’s Gardeners. Near the end, the scenes get a little too sketchy like a paint by number where paint's running out. Not as resonant as it could be.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Penelope waits for Odysseus, not all that quietly.

I enjoyed this, an erudite explanation of what motivated Penelope since who in history has cared what has motivated Penelope because Odysseus gets all the press. This is a comic story rather than a novel. It’s actually more like a gloss on a story. Or it’s a lecture. But in the end, the overall impression was slight and a little chilly.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

A fuckup finds himself the last living man on earth.

And yet the story is about how this fuck up Jimmy/Snowman was entrusted with the future of the humanity, or at least the future of a tribe of gentle souls called crakers, who’ve had all the sex and violence tinkered out of them. The story bounces back and forth through time, with funny energetic descriptions of this future world, its social divisions and the fantastic new creatures the corporations create. In this world, virtually everyone is crushed by the soulless corporate/militaristic bureaucracy. Jimmy/Snowman is a low achiever – for good reasons. My sympathy for him grew. However, I was very disappointed as I kept reading and soon began to realize that Oryx and Crake, who seem like tragic interesting characters, are never going to climb on the stage. When they finally do appear, they are very insubstantial. And their end, therefore, has little resonance.