The Blind Assassin: A Novel
by Margaret Atwood
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Book Summary Information
Author: Margaret AtwoodEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-08-28
ISBN: 0385720955
Number of pages: 521
Publisher: Anchor
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780385720953
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Blind Assassin: A Novel
Book Review: Atwood's Best Yet
Summary: 5 Stars
Margaret Atwood, a well-known Canadian poet, novelist, short-story writer, children's writer and editor born in 1939, won this year's Booker Prize for her latest work, The Blind Assassin. It is about time, too - this was her fourth novel nominated for the award. Atwood started writing seriously at the age of sixteen. Now, ten novels later, she has reached a new level of brilliance. The Blind Assassin isn't perfect, but it's breathtakingly close to it. Thomas Mallon from the New York Times called The Blind Assassin "overlong and badly written". Mallon is simply a victim of the initial inaccessibility of Atwood's most recent work. When reading The Blind Assassin, one gets the distinct feeling that it would exist quite happily with or without the reader - Atwood is giving us a glimpse into the complex world she has created. It is not important that the reader understands the book fully: The Blind Assassin is not created for the sake of the reader. Instead, it has a life of its own. It is a piece of artwork, constructed using a brave new style of literary structure. The seeds of this structure can be found in one of Atwood's previous novels - Cat's Eye, and yet The Blind Assassin is ingeniously imaginative and original.
The Blind Assassin does not follow the usual patterns - it isn't written chronologically; it moves between the realm of science-fiction and reality; it uses newspaper reports, newsletter articles, stories within stories, and multiple storytellers, to enhance the reader's understanding of the characters and their journeys. Considering that the book is made up of a number of supposedly incongruous elements, The Blind Assassin is remarkably coherent. Somehow, it works.
The main story is set in Port Ticonderoga, Canada. It explores the story of the Chase family, owners of the successful, lucrative Button Factory in the area. The Chases have plenty of money - they live in a large, grand house called Avilion, and the daughters of the family, Iris and Laura, are too well off to be allowed to mingle with the poorer children of the neighbourhood.
Their mother dies of a miscarriage when they are both young, and their father is a distant, troubled man who takes little interest in his daughters' lives. Their tutors are either useless or tyrannical - certainly not the sort of people they can turn to for love. Reenie, the live-in housemaid, fulfils in part the girls' need for a mother figure, as does Callista, their father's companion. And yet Iris says, "There were only the two of us...on our thorn-encircled island, waiting for rescue; and, on the mainland, everyone else."
The main body of the novel is in the form of a memoir, written by Iris. She recalls and explores two factors that led to Laura's suicide, as well as Iris' own unhappiness - the love that she and her sister had for a young man, Alex Thomas; and the loveless marriage that Iris' father forced her into to save his business.
The story about the city of Sakiel-Norn, which is intertwined with the main story, needs a good deal of concentration and at least two readings of the book before things start to really make sense. (A few hints for the reader - the literal talk about sacrifice in the city of Sakiel-Norn is linked to the themes of sacrifice in the Chase family's story; and, some of the characters in Laura's novel mirror the characters in Iris' memoir, though perhaps not in the way you'd expect them to).
It's best to read The Blind Assassin all in one hit. If you interrupt the flow of the story for a second, you can become quite lost. It's important to follow all of the threads of the different styles and sections simultaneously. So find a spare long weekend, or better yet, call in sick at work until you've finished. The Blind Assassin can be heavy reading, but with a bit of patience, you'll realise it was all worth it.
Atwood's appeal is far-reaching, however, many of her fans are women. And yet her books aren't just vehicles for pushing the feminist line. Instead, they are genuine, fascinating explorations into the humanness of her female characters. Katherine Viner from the Age Good Weekend writes that "her work is feminist in a much less literal and more mature sense, in that it features women who are good and bad, neat and messy, normal, damaged, whole, human." In other words, Atwood's characters reflect the diversity and complexity of women in the real world. In The Blind Assassin, Atwood explores issues relevant to women today - the importance of love in marriage, sexuality, motherhood, sisterhood and women's rights. She uses the stories of women in different times and realities to speak to the women of today.
Atwood was born into a world still recovering from World War One and the Great Depression, and was alive during the Second World War. Atwood uses these events, and the way they affected people's lives, in The Blind Assassin. She also discusses important issues like global warming, sacrifice, suicide and death, God, and child abuse, to name a few. The book is multitudinous - it covers nearly everything. The Blind Assassin is a must-read for all Atwood fans - it surpasses all of her previous work. If you've never read her books before, find out what you've been missing out on. No reader who enters Atwood's world will leave it unaffected. In fact, if you're anything like this reader, you'll leave it hungry for more. Write on, Margaret Atwood!
Summary of The Blind Assassin: A Novel
The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister'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. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.The Blind Assassin is a tale of two sisters, one of whom dies under ambiguous circumstances in the opening pages. The survivor, Iris Chase Griffen, initially seems a little cold-blooded about this death in the family. But as Margaret Atwood's most ambitious work unfolds--a tricky process, in fact, with several nested narratives and even an entire novel-within-a-novel--we're reminded of just how complicated the familial game of hide-and-seek can be:
What had she been thinking of as the car sailed off the bridge, then hung suspended in the afternoon sunlight, glinting like a dragonfly, for that one instant of held breath before the plummet? Of Alex, of Richard, of bad faith, of our father and his wreckage; of God, perhaps, and her fatal, triangular bargain.Meanwhile, Atwood immediately launches into an excerpt from Laura Chase's novel, The Blind Assassin, posthumously published in 1947. In this double-decker concoction, a wealthy woman dabbles in blue-collar passion, even as her lover regales her with a series of science-fictional parables. Complicated? You bet. But the author puts all this variegation to good use, taking expert measure of our capacity for self-delusion and complicity, not to mention desolation. Almost everybody in her sprawling narrative manages to--or prefers to--overlook what's in plain sight. And memory isn't much of a salve either, as Iris points out: "Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them." Yet Atwood never succumbs to postmodern cynicism, or modish contempt for her characters. On the contrary, she's capable of great tenderness, and as we immerse ourselves in Iris's spliced-in memoir, it's clear that this buttoned-up socialite has been anything but blind to the chaos surrounding her. --Darya Silver
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