Three riveting plot lines, interwoven across ninety years, told through Margaret Atwood's brilliant prose. What could be better? Maybe another story from this prolific and masterful author. And another, etc.

As she often does, this is also a unflinching portrayal of how women have struggled through the modern era simply to be seen for themselves, let alone allowed to live their own lives as they see fit. The strictures of both gender and privilege lead inevitably toward tragedy, for one character more immediate and dramatic, for another more hidden and long-lived. Two sisters navigate the maze of male power, one succumbing to normality and the other rejecting it, both paying a price, as if there is no way open to them to have the lives they want and need.

Tragic but hopeful, dark and then bubbling with her wit, the reader gets three novels in one with The Blind Assassin