Wow. What a fantastic book. I loved traveling through the life of the characters and how you get to know what happened in the past. I felt a lot of things while reading. Despite the book being slow paced, I really enjoyed the read.

Margaret Atwood leans into evocative imagery and rumination on language in this book. At times, it reads more like poetry, as she turns words and adages on their head, leaving no linguistic stone unturned. What a pleasure also to see a cynical octogenarian as a narrator. Atwood does not shy away from the effects of aging, especially under the burden of remorse and a troubled past. The book-within-the-book unfolds and wraps around the main sections with little hints at the mysteries behind what we are directly told scattered throughout. I found the book rather slow at times, but otherwise, a skillful masterpiece. 

The story of Iris and Laura was wonderful. The other parts not so much.

Listen, before you all come at me, I love Atwood, but this was such a miss for me. It was just so dull. I like a lot of her books, so I expected to like this one, but I really didn’t. 

 

Margaret Atwood  blends romance, science fiction, and gothic tension into one story in The Blind Assassin. The novel opens with the unexplained death of Laura Chase, a young lady who may have committed herself in 1945. Many years thereafter, Iris, Laura's sister, narrates her recollections of their early years and the noteworthy demises that had interspersed their affluent and colorful family's past. Chapters from the scandalous novel that made Laura famous, in which two illegal lovers entertain themselves with a story about a blind killer on a far-off planet, are woven into Iris's story. The mysteries that have plagued the Chase family for a long time are progressively revealed by these intricately detailed stories inside stories, culminating in an incredible and thought-provoking conclusion. 

 

I just found the characters too dull to even care about. Not even the forbidden love aspect was entertaining (and I love forbidden romance). 

 

I don’t know. Her writing style here just felt so childish compared to her previous novels, and that put me off so bad. It had a brilliant premise, but a horrible execution. Still love her though. 

Even down to the last twenty pages, this book wasn’t what I expected. It did move slowly, and I wasn’t especially invested in it until page 350 or so, which is a long wait. But the construction of the book (a novel within a novel) is interesting enough to make up for its slow pace. M.A.’s writing is arresting as well—even when I wasn’t invested in the story I enjoyed her telling of it. And the ending was a gut punch that made the early reading feel like a very worthwhile use of time. 

 The Blind Assassin won the Booker Prize in 2000. The protagonist is Iris Chase Griffin who, in her eighties, is writing her life story so that her surviving granddaughter will know the truth about her life and that of the wider family. Iris’s was an interesting life which included a prosperous, if motherless, childhood, an unhappy marriage to a controlling businessman, a complicated relationship with her younger sister Laura who became a famous novelist, and many, many secrets - some involving Iris and others discovered by her. Various historical events were folded into the plot and I particularly enjoyed the look at Canadian businesses, labour relations, and Communist activity in the inter-war years.

That Atwood’s writing was a standout goes without saying and, as always, I was impressed by her storytelling abilities. I enjoyed the snippets from the social pages featuring Chase and Griffen family members, as well as newspaper articles about various political events. However, the standout was the unique book within a book within a book structure. Iris’s story included chapters from Laura’s novel which itself included a science fiction told by one character to another. The way these stories reinforced each other was very clever and I enjoyed discovering links, connections and parallels between the three different stories. The structure added depth and richness to the story. I do think it contributed to my taking a while to settle into the book though. A complicated slow burn but for me it was worth it.