Synopsis
In her 10th novel, Margaret Atwood creates an elderly woman named Iris Griffen, who looks back on her life life of privilege and wealth in Ontario, Canada. Alongside Iris's story, we read a bizarrely futuristic novel about obsession, written by her sister Laura, who seems to have committed suicide in 1945. The two stories are enhanced by newspaper accounts about these two women and their families over half a century, and by a stunningly unexpected ending.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2001-08-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 521 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 16.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
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.
Industry Reviews
"THE BLIND ASSASSIN...possesses the unusual lyrical sensuousness that distinguished ALIAS GRACE (1996), Atwood's last major work. A complex rumination on narrative, it is as elegant and dynamic as its predecessor, but more contemplative and more edgy--and much more witty."
Doody
"If we apply the old Forsterian standard that round characters are ones 'capable of surprising in a convincing way,' Atwood's new novel, for all its multilayered story-within-a-story-within-a-story construction, must be judged flat as a pancake. In THE BLIND ASSASSIN, overlong and badly written, our first impressions of the dramatis personae prove not so much lasting as total....[T]he two parts of Atwood's big new book feel like separate projects that have been soldered together rather than thematically connected. Worse still, nothing in either part gives a reader much desire to forge connections through inference."
New York Times Book Review - Thomas Mallon (09/03/2000)
"The novel is largely unencumbered by the feminist ideology that weighed down such earlier Atwood novels as THE EDIBLE WOMAN and THE HANDMAID'S TALE, and for the most part it is also shorn of those books' satiric social vision. In fact, of all the author's books to date, THE BLIND ASSASSIN is most purely a work of entertainment--an expertly rendered Daphne du Maurieresque tale that showcases Ms. Atwood's narrative powers and her ardent love of the Gothic."
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani (09/08/2000)
"Atwood writes an entertaining and bracing tale, fun to read, forgettable when finished."
Nation - Brenda Wineapple (12/11/2000)
"For three days I could hardly put the book aside. Still, the novel sometimes verges close to the sentimental and often sounds like a pastiche of period writers....As for craftsmanship, the plot miters are perfect (though only the obtuse will fail to guess the two big revelations in the final pages); the voices, especially that of the elderly Iris Chase, quite mesmerizing; and the prose as touching or funny as Atwood wishes it to be. Yet as sheerly enjoyable as THE BLIND ASSASSIN is, I can't help but feel that the book may be just a little too easy somehow, that it covers its ground expertly but without really breaking into new imaginative territory. There's no surprise in finding it a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club....THE BLIND ASSASSIN may not be a groundbreaking work of art, but its smoothness, wit and mournful wisdom are deeply ingratiating. Would that all book club selections were as good as this one." <BR>"
Washington Post Book World - Michael Dirda (09/03/2000)
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