The Blind Assassin

by Margaret Atwood, Margot Dionne (Narrator)

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

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Classics, Canada

Audio Cassette

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.

Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth ­ in the Massey series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.

Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Associations: Margaret Atwood was President of the Writers' Union of Canada from May 1981 to May 1982, and was President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking) from 1984-1986. She and Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International. Ms. Atwood is also a current Vice-President of PEN International.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

- So are you still trudging through the Margaret Atwood?

- George, you should stop being so dismissive! Have you ever read it?

- Well, I think I got as far as chapter three. Typical po-mo cleverness with a story inside a story inside... anyway, I decided I couldn't take any more, so I gave up.

- So do you want to know what it's about?

- You're going to tell me, aren't you?

- Only if you want me to.

- Okay, okay. I want you to. Snuggle up and tell me all about it. Satisfied?

- Mmm. Well, satisfied for now anyway. You know, George, you actually might like it. Some of it's a bit depressing, but there's this very sexy thread where in each episode she meets her lover, and they lie in bed together and he tells her this bizarre science-fiction story...

- A bit like we're doing now?

- A bit.

- I like that. So what kind of story is it?

- Well, he's a pulp SF writer, so it's very pulpy, but in a good way. There's this planet with three suns and seven moons and deadly mountains haunted by beautiful nude undead women with azure hair and eyes like snake-filled pits...

- That does sound sexy. I like the snake-filled pits too.

- I knew you would. And he's telling it in a very clever, ironic way, and some of the time he's just having fun, and some of the time it's sort of about him and her.

- Where does the blind assassin come in?

- Well, in the science-fiction story, there's this character who's a blind master assassin. That's sort of the guy telling the story. And he falls in love with this beautiful girl, who's supposed to be sacrificed on the altar. She's sort of the girl he's telling the story to.

- How could a master assassin be blind?

- Honestly, George, don't be so literal about everything. Anyway, you liked Daredevil, didn't you?

- Okay, you got me. Carry on.

- Well, the science-fiction story is the innermost one. The guy and the girl are characters in a book that was written by a girl who killed herself by driving off a bridge...

- Why did she kill herself?

- You don't find out until the end of the book. It's a whydunnit...

- You mean there's a plot and everything?

- Honestly, George, of course there's a plot! There's even a twist.

- Wow. Okay, so the girl killed herself driving off the bridge?

- Yes, and her sister, who's now very old, is writing about her and her book, and what happened to make her write it.

- And I suppose the book she wrote is about stuff that happened to her and her sister?

- Could be. I don't want to drop too many spoilers.

- I still don't see why it has to be so complicated.

- Well, you thought Inception was great, didn't you? All those layers?

- Yeah...

- Okay, it's a bit like that. It really works. But you'd have trouble explaining why to someone who hadn't seen it.

- Mmm.

- Mmm?

- You know, it's Valentine's Day.

- It is. Sorry, I won't try and sell you any more Margaret Atwood for a while. George. Mmm.

- Mmm.

- Mmm!

*************************

- George?

- Mmm?

- Were you having a dream?

- I think so.

- What kind of dream? You had such a funny look on your face.

- A dream inside a dream inside a dream. You know, I might read that book after all.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

As seen on The Readventurer

I have to admit, I often do not get Margaret Atwood's books. But I am pretty sure I got The Blind Assassin. Otherwise how can I explain the feeling of sadness that is overwhelming me right now?

It's so hard to express what exactly this book is about - any synopsis you read doesn't do it justice and explains nothing. Mine probably will be as misleading and pointless as all others. The Blind Assassin is a puzzle of a story, with multiple tales within tales. It starts with the main character, Iris, telling us of the day when her sister Laura drove off a bridge, then shifts to Laura's posthumously published novel The Blind Assassin about two unnamed lovers who meet clandestinely and in which the man entertains his lover with pulpy science fiction stories, mostly about a blind assassin and a sacrificial virgin who fall in love against all odds. Then the story shifts again to Iris who, now an old woman, recalls her early years and the events leading to Laura's death. What is it all about I wondered? Why did Laura die? Why novel within a novel? Who are these secret nameless lovers? I didn't understand the significance of Laura's The Blind Assassin for a while - awful sci-fi junk and all, and yet it turned out to be the most symbolic, the most intimate piece of (bad) fiction I have ever read.

Atwood always writes about women and this novel is no exception. Ultimately, The Blind Assassin is a story of two young sisters who were unlucky to be born at a wrong time when women were expected to be wholly satisfied with shiny things and not much else. There is plenty of stories that explore submissive status of women in this world, the constraints they live under, but this one, I am sure, will stick with me for a long time. IDK how she does it, but Atwood writes it so well - these two girls raised not to be independent, who, although they are full of life and vigor, are locked inside the prison of their own home. It doesn't really matter if they dare to escape their golden cages or not. They are powerless, either outwardly or inwardly.

I know I am rambling here. I find it difficult to rave and explain what I loved about The Blind Assassin. It's just I am so full of feelings right now - of understanding and compassion for Iris and Laura's plight, of frustration over their weaknesses and pride over their moments of strength. Not many books can make me feel so much.

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

“All stories are about wolves… Anything else is sentimental drivel.”

Atwood doesn’t write sentimental drivel (and I don’t read it), and there are several wolves in this stunning book. This is my tenth Atwood, and it’s even better than any of the others I’ve enjoyed. The scope and variety of her work is impressive, but here, she accomplishes that within the covers of a single book: it should be shelved as historical fiction, memoir, espionage/thriller, and sci-fi.

It grabs the reader in the first brief chapter (less than three pages), which would work as a short story: so much is implied, but so little stated, you can’t help but read on, eagerly. This also sets a pattern of foreshadowing: you know many key events long before they “happen”, but have to wait and think to find out how and why.

The pacing is perfect, too. I guessed some crucial elements well before they were revealed, but there was enticing uncertainty, and always another conundrum in the pipeline. This creates a pleasing balance between pride and doubt in the reader.

Matryoshka – stories within stories

The analogy with a nest of Russian dolls applies far more to this than David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. The different layers constantly switch, but it’s never confusing:

1. Iris, the narrator, is an elderly woman, describing her daily life, with a backdrop of weather, seasons, and fear of losing independence. It's painfully poignant, lightened with waspish and often self-deprecating humour.

2. Iris also tells the story of her life and that of her sister (Laura), from childhood to the “present” day, with a backdrop of two world wars, the Depression, and political/union unrest. Born to wealth and respectability, but lacking parental love, their lives – and relationship with each other - take many turns. This is the main bulk of the story: historical fiction, sweeping most of the 20th century, set in SE Canada.

3. As a young woman, Laura drives off a bridge (not a spoiler; it’s in the first sentence of the book), and a few years later, after going through Laura’s papers, Iris publishes her novel “Blind Assassin”, excerpts of which are in this book of the same name. It’s the story of a pair of covert lovers, each with secrets and something to lose. He is short of money, constantly on the move. Clandestine meetings in a series of seedy bedsits and borrowed rooms are hard to arrange. The vague politics of this overlap with the specific labour unrest in the main story.

4. Within that novel, the nameless man, a writer of pulp sci-fi, tells stories of planet Zyrcon to the nameless woman. The title of both books comes from the fact that slave children are trained to create beautiful carpets – to the point at which they go blind. Some then go into the sex trade, and some become assassins. This then, is a pastiche, of a "lowbrow" genre, rather than the speculative fiction Atwood often writes, and is meant to echo the politics of its fictional author (are you still following this?).

5. The world of Zyrcon has its own myths, some of which are told. There are parallels with ancient cultures on Earth.

In addition, there are occasional newspaper reports, and the odd letter from a school or doctor.

This is a brave format that could alienate readers who like one style/genre and dislike another, but I think it worked very well, in part because most chapters are short, so you never feel trapped in a style that is not your favourite. I paid a little less attention to the details of what happened on Zycron, but that was mainly because I was so anxious to know what happened to Iris and Laura. On a reread, I would study Zycron more closely, to see the parallels with the stories around it. (I made a similar mistake with the historical chapters of people and gods coming to America, in Gaiman's American Gods, which I reviewed HERE.)

Warning to Apatt: Some of the sections use quotation marks and some don’t (it didn’t bother me, though).

The Title

The title clearly refers to the novel within the novel of that name, and which features assassins who are literally blind. However, there are other characters in the "real" stories who could be classed as such, in a more metaphorical sense. Few characters are troubled by guilt, though.

Aging Iris

Iris is a wonderful creation: old, cranky, lonely, feisty, sharp, and something of an outsider all her life, even from her own family. She grudgingly accepts a modicum of help from Myra and Walter: “I am what makes her so good in the eyes of others”; Iris carries her laundry like Little Red Riding Hood “except that I myself am Granny, and I contain my own bad wolf”. Nevertheless, she resists as much as she can, while painfully noting the effects of time on her body.

“I feel like a letter – deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.”

“I yearn for sleep… yet it flutters ahead of me like a sooty curtain.”

“After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is… [the body’s] final trick is simply to absent itself.”

For all that Iris cultivates curmudgeonliness, it’s largely a carapace, and sometimes for entertainment (sarcastic letters to fans of The Blind Assassin, wanting to interview her about Laura); the really nasty piece of work is her arriviste sister-in-law, Winifred.

Youthful Laura

Laura doesn’t live to be old. She’s an enigma as a child, and more so after death – to Iris and the reader. “Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead… Nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.”

Iris assembles a series of impressions, but you can never quite grasp her – which is entirely appropriate: Laura was “interested in forms” and “wanted essences”, but not in facts and logic – and yet she was a literalist with “a heightened capacity for belief”.

“Being Laura was like being tone deaf: the music played and you heard something, but it wasn’t what everyone else heard.”

She was “too cozy with strangers… It wasn’t that she flouted rules: she simply forgot about them.” Hence, she “had only the haziest notions of ownership”. She “was not selfless… she was skinless”. Unlike Iris, she had the courage of her (decidedly odd) convictions and didn’t care what other people thought.

Sisters sharing

There is an essay to be written on what Laura and Iris share - and what they don't. It's not just the obvious things.

Class: Winifred and Richard

Snobbery, especially looking down on new money, is not just a British ailment. Iris and Laura were the granddaughters of a wealthy industrialist who married above himself, gaining respectability for the family.

Iris’s husband, Richard, is very new money. His ghastly sister runs his life (as well as lots of charity committees) and then moulds and controls young, newlywed Iris. “Her [teaching] method was one of hint, suggestion.” So “I seemed to myself erased, featureless, like an avalanche of used soap, or the moon on the wane”.

As Iris matures, she increasingly sees through this and resists or retaliates, and of course she’s telling it with the wisdom of old age. It’s amusingly, but painfully catty. “You could be charming… with a little effort”.

“Avilion [the family home] had once had an air of stability that amounted to intransigence”, but after Winifred and Richard refurbish it, “it no longer had the courage of its pretensions”. Overdoing it somewhat, Atwood adds between those two phrases, “a large, dumpy boulder plunked [sic] down in the stream of time, refusing to be moved for anybody – but now it was dog-eared, apologetic, as if it were about to collapse in on itself”!

Richard is a shadowy (in every sense) figure – something Iris/Atwood acknowledges. “As the days went by I felt I knew Richard less and less… I myself however was taking shape – the shape intended for me, by him… coloured in.” Later, “I’ve failed to convey Richard, in any rounded sense… He’s blurred, like the face in some wet, discarded newspaper.”

In their marriage, “Placidity and order… with a decorous and sanctioned violence… underneath” because he “preferred conquest to cooperation in every area of life”. Chillingly, “It was remarkable how easily I bruised, said Richard, smiling.”

Classless?

Alex Thomas is classless: his background, even if you believe his own account (child refugee of unknown family) gives no clue. That might enable him to fit in anywhere, but really, he's alien everywhere (not in a literal, lizardy sense).

Green

In The Handmaid’s Tale, red is a recurring colour. Here, it’s green, often for clothing, and occasionally in conjunction with the colour watermelon. However, the symbolism isn’t as clear here as in Handmaid; it’s usually related to coldness, rather than jealousy. A few examples (out of more than twenty!):

• “Her slip is the chill green of shore ice, broken ice.”
• “Sober colours… hospital-corridor green” (Laura’s typical attire).
• Richard chose an emerald engagement ring (though his sister, Winifred, overruled that, so he proffered a diamond).
• Just before a tornado, “the sky had turned a baleful shade of green”.
• A bombe desert at dinner was “bright green” and honeymoon salad “tasted like pale-green water… Like frost”.

Quotes – truth, secrets, memory, writing

After years of negligible education, the girls have a fierce new tutor, “We did learn, in a spirit of vengefulness… What we really learned from him was how to cheat” as well as “silent resistance… and not getting caught”. Useful skills.

• “It’s not the lying that counts, it’s evading the necessity for it.”
• “The best way to keep a secret is to pretend there isn’t one.”
• Secret lovers “proclaiming love, withholding the particulars”.
• “It was an effort for me now to recall the details of my grief – the exact forms it had taken – although at will I could summon up an echo of it.”
• “Is what I remember the same things as what actually happened?”
• “The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read… not even by yourself.”
• Looking back at her wedding photo, “I don’t recall having been present… I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome… I can see her… but she can’t see me.”

Quotes – weather, seasons, nature

• “The light like melted butter… trees with exhausted leaves.”
• In a park, “disregarded corners… leggy dandelions stretching towards the light”.
• “Light filtered through the net curtain, hanging suspended in the air, sediment in a pond.”
• When hot and humid, “The words I write feather at the edges like lipstick on an aging mouth”.
• “The sky was a hazy grey, the sun low in the sky, a wan pinkish colour, like fish blood. Icicles… as if suspended in the act of falling.”
• “Wild geese… creaking like anguished hinges.”
• “Grudging intimations of spring.”

Quotes - other

• “Only the blind are free.” A blind assassin “sees through the girl’s clothing with the inner eye that is the bliss of solitude”.
• “There’s nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy”. I guess EL James proves that.
• Tourist trinkets: “History… was never this winsome, and especially not this clean”.
• “The other side of selflessness is tyranny.” and “He can’t have found living with her forgiveness all that easy.”
• The mother of a difficult baby “lost altitude… lost resilience”, so the sibling found “silence, helpfulness the only way to fit in”.
• “She has a soft dense mouth like a waterlogged velvet cushion and tapered fingers deft as a fish.”
• “Children believe that everything bad that happens is their fault…but they also believe in happy endings.”
• “Dowdy to the point of pain.”
• “A black dress, simply cut but voraciously elegant.”
• “Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.”
• On a virgin’s bed, “The arctic waste of starched white bedsheet stretched out to infinity.”
• “Touch comes before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”
• A flashy lawyer's office has “an abstract painting compose of pricey smudges… they bill by the minute… just like the cheaper whores.”
• Shaving and plucking to create “A topography like wet clay, a surface the hands would glide over.”
• Downtrodden people are “Broken verbs.”
• The kettle “began its lullaby of steam”.
• In a seedy hotel, “wallpaper, no longer any colour”.
• “He killed things by chewing off their roots.”
• “Unshed tears can turn you rancid.”

[J.L. Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.”

Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin is a fascinating and compelling read! There are so many seemingly competing stories which add to the complexity of the narrator and her life. They are also next to impossible to fully understand without the rest of the stories (as strange and disjointed as they sometimes appear). The result is that the reader stays somewhat lost until all the pieces fall into place. The novel begins with the death (apparently suicide) of the narrator's sister. This beginning section is engaging; however, the payoff for following all the story's threads comes much later in the narrative. By about the final 100 pages I was savoring the experience of discovery: how each story had always been purposeful and relevant all along. I'm a big fan of Margaret Atwood's works, but this is very different than anything I'd read before (like Handmaid's Tale or Oryx & Crake). 4.5 stars rounded up. Very worthwhile!

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

atwood's Booker Prize-winning novel is a slow and melancholy downward movement, one in which the melancholy becomes cumulative. despite the sad and tragic tone, there are many paths to pure enjoyment present: through the precise, judgmental, dryly amusing recollections of the narrator as she recounts her current life and her past life between the world wars; through the intense, intimate, yet almost metaphorical scenes of two lovers connecting, not connecting, reconnecting; through the wonderful pastiche of golden era science fantasy tales featuring mute sacrificial victims, blind child assassins, erotic peach women, deadly lizard men. but despite those paths to enjoyment, each narrative strand is based in despair, in missed opportunities, in moribund ritual, in the end of things. there is no wish fulfillment available on any level, and the novel's main mystery - although surprising and having a revenge-filled punch at the end - is still such a sad one to contemplate. motivations are revealed, characters you thought you knew become transformed, reversals of fortune happen in the space of a paragraph, and yet what i was left with by the end was a sadness at recognizing the impossibility of true happiness, true love, true fulfillment. well, at least in the world of Blind Assassin!

the novel is bleak. and yet it is beautiful as well, and truly compassionate towards the two women at its heart. the writing itself is, in a word, awesome. i'm not sure there is an English language writer living who can construct so many artful, evocative, poetic passages without sliding into over-writing. time and again i would stop to re-read a phrase or a paragraph just to enjoy the beauty and depth of what was written. nor does Blind Assassin beat the reader down with despair; much of the time i was so absorbed with the careful description of life in port ticonderoga between the wars and with enormously well-developed characters that i was able to not feel as if i was in a boat slowly drifting towards a waterfall. but in the end, that waterfall was there, and the characters and the reader all eventually tumble over. such as sad experience!

ONLY SPOILERS AHEAD:

poor laura chase, the secret and tragic hero of Blind Assassin. a fascinating, frustrating character. by the end, her motivations revealed, it all made so much sense. not a temptress, neither vindictive nor vacant, but simply a person out of place and out of her time. her motivation: to do good, to understand God, to live for herself, to not live in a world of deceit or corruption. i fell in love with her a little bit. but really, she's too deep for me, too strange, too...not for this world.

iris griffen: i was reminded of many things when trying to understand her character: the tunnel-vision of those madly in love, their inability to recognize the thoughts and feelings of others; the frustrating blankness of those who let life carry them along, the placidity that may appear to conceal depth but often is only a symptom of disengagement; and the potential villainy of that passivity, that blankness. this is a woman who thoughtlessly destroys her sister's reason for living, who does nothing when that sister is carted off to an asylum, who rejects the obvious need for love from her daughter, who lets her daughter and granddaughter get carted away from her, whose primary attribute is inaction. until she is, at long last, able to engage in some good old fashioned revenge. Blind Assassin has a pair of truly repulsive villains, but the the reader is not allowed to see inside of them. their motivations remain both shallow and shadowy. but iris griffen is the real deal: a character whose motivations the reader comes to understand, a person whose yearning for love and for redemption and for independence is expressed in no uncertain terms, a woman who is rendered so three-dimensionally that the reader comes to understand almost every part of her, a villain whose passivity allows the destruction of those she should protect.

[Matt Quann · Rating 3 out of 5]

The readers from Sakiel-Norn, due to their long and drawn-out labor, have been known to fall asleep during their readings. Though it is not typical of the readers, even their most prolific colleagues would admit to having stolen a few quiet moments of rest in between pages. The Blind Assassin, was an exception for one of the readers. He dropped the 600-page tomb again and again on his unsuspecting face, rousing himself from a newly established slumber.

If you haven’t gathered, I found this one pretty slow.

After Oryx & Crake became one of my all-time favorite sci-fi novels early in my university days, I was disappointed by both follow-up instalments in the Maddadam trilogy. So I took a break from Atwood, but fully intended to return to her prolific back catalogue. The Blind Assassin seemed like the ideal next step: sci-fi, mysterious family dealings, AND a Booker Prize Winner? It had all the makings of a novel I’d enjoy.

But…

Well, it isn’t bad, that’s for sure. I’ll spare you a synopsis that you can find it easily in any of the other reviews, and instead tell you that the book’s structure ticks along like fine clockwork. Iris’ present day recounting is contrasted with the installments in the book-within-the-book, the eponymous The Blind Assassin, and newspaper clippings. It all does come together neatly (but messily for the characters). Both the story in the present and that in the past compliment one another, and influenced my interpretation of one another.

But…

Man, is it ever slow.

I’ll admit to having read a lot of shorter novels lately, and I first wracked up The Blind Assassin’s slow opening to my relative naiveté with larger undertakings. Yet, by the time I was 200-pages deep, it was obvious that the speed Atwood set was what could be expected for the duration of the journey.

There are passages here that are extremely strong. Some resonated with me deeply, or provided a profound point that stuck with me after I put the book back down. But there’s so much more writing that seemed superfluous and some sentences seem designed by thesauruses they are so stiffly constructed. Atwood’s writing is generally strong throughout, but she indulges in some stuffy writing that absolutely detracted from my reading experience.

Of course, what’s the good in the writing if the story isn’t any good? After having completed the novel, the story is definitely a good one. The concept is solid, the characters have strong motivations, and though I saw a lot of the ending twist coming, Atwood pulls it off in the final 100-pages with such style that I didn’t mind that I’d already figured it out.

But…

The novel is overblown, and could have accomplished all it did a good 100- to 150-pages lighter. There are so many passages that seem like they could have been snipped away by a keen-eyed editor and I would have been none the wiser. The girls’ childhood story goes on a bit too long, and the story doesn’t really start to become engaging until Iris is married off (into a nest of vipers that comprise two particularly heinous villains). The last 100 pages move quickly and are easily the most gripping in the novel. The story reaches a tragic climax that pulls on what has come before, but also exposes what was not essential to the story.

My reading experience of Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin is well summed up by the following quote from the novel.

But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment.”
-Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

It’s sort of a shame to admit, but in reading The Blind Assassin I felt that I got all of the monotonous lead up, that took a bit of the impact out of the novel’s “sudden moment.” This is a slow and ponderous read, though I can’t say I regret reading it. The ending is quite good, and I really did enjoy Atwood’s meticulously designed story structure.

For all of you who have enjoyed the book, I can totally see where you’re coming from. Unfortunately, The Blind Assassin just never clicked with me in the way I expected. So, all-in-all, a book that I thought was good, but also one that I felt moved too slowly for its own good.

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

A superb book looking at the lies, cover-ups, stories and tragedies besetting a one-time rich family in Canada as their worth, status and influence diminishes over the years, as so do their numbers! Stories within stories within stories. Atwood captures each passing decade perfectly right down to the colloquialisms. Very nice work. 8 out of 12.

2016 read

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dynastic Misfortune

That strip of Canada from the Niagara River to Lake St. Clair along the northern shore and hinterland of Lake Erie is a very peculiar place. Culturally it is best defined in negative terms: it is not the United States of those coarse and tasteless Yankees, and it is not French-speaking as are their equally coarse and tasteless neighbours in Quebec. Geographically I suppose it might be called lower rather than Southern Ontario, suggesting a certain psychic distance from the national capital in Ottawa and an obsessive concern about ‘leakage’ of population from the multiplying Catholic hordes in Lower Canada (which is in fact more ‘Upper’). Historically it was settled by American Anglican Loyalists fleeing retribution in their old homeland and, until after WW II, mostly by more British and Irish fleeing theirs. Socially it was perhaps one of the most class-ridden, politically manipulated, and snobbish places on the planet, at least until Canada itself became highly cosmopolitan.

Atwood combines all this to make that strip of land her principal character in The Blind Assassin. Using a combination of fictional press reports, conventional third-party narration, and first person quasi-memoir, along with an accumulating internal allegory, she diffuses the book’s point of view into a sort of literary montage of the place itself. The narrative line is the saga of the prominent Chase family over the hundred years from the 1890’s, its rise and fall and ultimate disintegration. But none of the family members is nearly as interesting as the cultural and political background in which they act, and within which they are effectively trapped.

The inhabitants of this land are like the Boers of South Africa. They came to dominance on the principle that might makes right and stay in power by treating it as a divine command. One way or another all the members of the Chase family are sacrificed materially and spiritually to the Gods of Power - family reputation, patriarchal will, a provincial ideal of aristocracy, subtle racism, less subtle misogyny, and a superstitious morality provided by the least educated but, paradoxically, most influential members of the community. They look on these things as values, things to be protected and preserved. They are in fact quasi-genetic defects that are passed along to their children and ensure their inability to find satisfaction in that land, or any other. As with the Boers, these people enact and execute a self-imposed death sentence, an example of which opens the book.

On the face of it, there is no reason to think that this fertile but otherwise rather nondescript piece of real estate in which nothing of world-historical significance has taken place (except perhaps the US retaliatory invasion and burning of York, later Toronto, during the War of 1812) might provide the substance for a longish novel of intricate family history. But it works, in the same way, for example, that the television series Dallas works to make Eastern Texas interesting. One can’t help but be drawn into Schadenfreude by the obvious hypocrisy, betrayals, and machinations of each generation. What Atwood reveals about the region’s culture is not its hidden depths but rather its secret shallowness. The waste of human effort and talent in maintaining itself is enormous. But these things are captivating, perhaps even titilating. Because Atwood only does the slowest of reveals, the reader is forced to pay attention to details as if the book were a murder mystery - which in a way is exactly what it is.

[Annet · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘It’s loss and regret and misery and yearn that drive the story forward, along its twisted road’, Margaret Atwood towards the end of this book. It describes the story of the Blind Assassin, which starts with the famous sentence: ‘Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.’….
I’m deeply impressed and affected by this book. Without a doubt one of the best I ever read.

I started this book last year, had it on my shelves for a long time already. I couldn’t really bring myself to start on it, but I am a big fan of the apocalyptic books of Atwood and really thought I should do this. I started, and a couple hundred pages in, I stopped in October… and resumed the book in January. Don’t quite know why. It’s not an easy to read book. It takes all your attention, effort, energy. You need to stay alert. No easy reading here. And… the book deserves all that attention. Because every sentence, description, character is interesting, the story is so beautifully written. I just needed a break I guess.

Without getting into detail, because that would soon mean spoiling. It’s a dramatic mysterious story and you keep wondering who is who, what am I missing, who did what… in the end, it all fell into place for me (I think). I absolutely loved the story telling of Iris, the sister of Laura. Iris, an old lady now, tells the story of her family, her father, her sister Laura, her political and unloving husband Richard and gruesome sister in law Winifred… It’s a story of tragedy, love, guilt, power and powerlessness.

Iris’ stories are personal, sad, guilt felt, but also sharp, cynic, humorous. Her observations witty. About her husband… ‘He was putting on weight, he was eating out a lot; he was making speeches, at clubs, at weighty gatherings. Ponderous gatherings, at which weighty, substantial men met and pondered, because, everyone suspected it, there was heavy weather ahead. All that speechmaking can bloat a man up. I’ve watched the process, many times now. It’s those kinds of words, the kind they use in speeches. They have a fermenting effect on the brain…’

The scenes for example where she sits in the toilet of the doughnut shop, to read the new sentences added to the toilet door are great little scenes. ‘The newest message was in gold marker: You can’t get to heaven without Jesus. Already the annotators had been at work: Jesus had been crossed out and Death written above it, in black. And below that in green: Heaven is in a grain of sand. Blake…..’ Her stories are alternated by chapters called ‘The Blind Assassin’ of a man and woman meeting each other secretly in sleezy places, having an affair obviously, who are they? And always accompanied by a science fiction type story about the planet Zycron and the city Sakiel-Norn, a story that the man tells the woman in parts.

I took the last part of the book in stages of 30-50 pages, slowly reading on and taking everything in. I don’t know quite what to say anymore. I will be thinking a lot about this impressive story... For those who find it hard to get through the start, do keep at it, it’s worth it…. Truly, a grand book.

[Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Thick plots are my specialty. If you want a thinner kind, look elsewhere..." [119]

Indeed one delves into an Atwood with the thought "What effect is she trying to convey" always, ALWAYS at the forefront of your mind. She is a master magician, & one inevitably always needs to see the strings behind her tricks.

I must say that "The Blind Assassin" gave me the most comforting and treasured and magnificent shutting up that I could possibly deserve (essential lessons you learn all by your itty bitty self). The first 400+ pages of it, yes, I will admit, my early review WOULD have read something like this: "The interplay of attempts both conscious (the nebulousness of plot) and un- (surplus description) falls well below expectation." But I was dead wrong. You will remember--these are the musings of the main character in retrograde--she is an old woman*--her thoughts are akimbo. This book, my friends, is what that century-old "stick with it" rule applied to literature is all about. Even the writer herself knows that the anesthetic fog of it all must come to a halt--she has you exactly where she wants you--and knowing that the brave reader indeed braves on, she rewards him with the most elegant, the most perfect ending EVER! Eloquent beyond... Beyond.

Why are haters haters? Because we are addicted to getting slapped in the face by genuine beauty.

*SPOILER(?): this woman would totally be, in her advanced age, BFFs with "Atonement"'s Brionny Talis !!!!

[Violet wells · Rating 3 out of 5]

First thought was, I think this might have been a really good 350 page novel. Unfortunately it’s almost twice the size and as cluttered with random detail as an attic. In this sense it’s a typical Booker Prize winner (for me the only time the Booker judges have got even close to being on the money in the past decade is Hilary Mantel).

Ostensibly The Blind Assassins tells the story of two sisters and their relationships with two men at either ends of the political spectrum – Iris marries the industrialist and fascist sympathiser Richard Griffen, her sister Laura is infatuated with a communist agitator, Alex Thomas. This all takes place in the years before WW2. The two girls grow up in an idyllic house called Avilion (Avalon was the island King Arthur was taken after being wounded and Atwood presents a way of life at Avilion as something equally wounded and on the verge of expiring). The girls’ childhood was probably my favourite part of this novel which has many tiers and many stories within stories (too many). For me Atwood’s at her best when she isn’t trying to be too clever, when she drops her penchant for melodrama and rather self-defeating literary juggling acts.
There’s also a novel within this novel. Alex Thomas to survive writes pulp fiction for magazines and invents Planet Zycron. For the most part Planet Zycron is pure silliness. Kind of fun as a narrative Alex makes up while in bed with his lover but wholly implausible as a novel that has received critical acclaim and is still in print fifty years later.

Also, I’m afraid I’m not really a great fan of Atwood’s prose. Sometimes it reminds me of the literary equivalent of elderly people wearing teenage clothes. Like this this observation which starts off great but ends up like chewing gum. “Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later. Then he finds out. Then his dick falls off.” She’s also got an annoying habit of using two consecutive metaphors for the same observation. Or else using a metaphor that is so wacky that it creates more confusion than clarity - as when bread is described as ''white and soft and flavorless as an angel's buttock.”
The central male character, Richard Griffin, is a feminist’s wet dream. He’s so conclusively vile that it becomes like a fancy dress costume. Impossible to take serious. Ditto, his sister Winnifred. A pair of 19th century monsters in a 20th century novel. Pantomime versions of the fabulously wicked Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle in Portrait of a Lady. Patriarchal male bullying has been done with so much more artistry and subtlety (and plausibility) – Casaubon with Dorothea in Middlemarch for example or the King Lear father in Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres which I’m presently reading. There’s a strong element of feminist crowd pleasing in this utterly one dimensional portrait of patriarchal tyranny. Ironically it also serves to make you like Iris, his wife, less.

The novel revolves on a central twist, you could almost say it’s the novel’s raison d’etre, and this is the clever and engaging part of this novel - the two sisters become the same woman with two contrasting fates: Iris conforms and survives at a ghastly price, Laura refuses to compromise and dies. The problem is all the clutter heaped around this fascinating central theme.

[Mark Porton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood is a magnificent 5-star, multi-dimensional, many-layered classic.

This story is based in Canada, in the fictional rural town of Port Ticonderoga and the city of Toronto and involves the lives of two sisters, Iris and Laura, who were raised in the 1930s. Their Grandfather created a very successful button making business, creating great wealth. We follow the lives of the sisters until the 1940s. There are two main timelines, firstly, ‘the past' during the early part of the 1900s - and secondly we hear the perspective of Iris, as an older woman, who reflects on her life.

There are some rich characters in this book, most notably Laura – capricious, vivacious, wild and precocious – then there’s Richard Griffen, a highly driven businessman and husband of Iris. My third pick is Alex Thomas, a young, rebellious, lefty who touches the lives of both sisters. But there are so many more. We also learn about the period, and politics of this incredibly interesting period of history – namely, the Great Depression, the Great War and WW2.

Okay this sounds like a straightforward, family saga, during an interesting period of history with the author running a couple of different timelines.

For most, this would be enough, but this author decides to throw in a bizarre and (initially) difficult to fathom narrative regarding a fictional alien city called Sakiel-Norn on the planet Zycron. This place was populated by Snilfards, Ygnirods and slaves and there was a lot of turmoil, fighting, sacrificing and dreadful atrocities carried out such as blinding children used as slave labour to make carpets.

Well, who would’ve thought?

As if this isn’t enough – Atwood describes yet another story involving a place called Xenor, which is a planet located in another dimension of space, populated by super-intelligent, super cruel LIZARD MEN!!! That’s not all – these Lizard Men have red underpants made of a metallic substance unknown on Earth to protect their vital parts which were scaly, enormous (let’s not deny it) but also vulnerable.

So, it is safe to say there is PLENTY happening in this book. But this author is so, so skilful and she pulls it all off, it all comes together, it makes sense in the end and it is just a wonderful book. When I finished the last page, I let the book fall onto my chest (as I was lying on my back) and just said “WOW”.

Some may think these other narratives would have been a distraction to the main game, but no – they keep the reader guessing, ensures we stay on our toes. At the end of the day, we still really care about Iris and Laura, so they are never forgotten, and their story is fascinating. It is so well written.

Absolutely loved this. What a wonderful start to 2021.

5 Stars

[Candi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I wonder which is preferable - to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?"

There is no doubt in my mind that Margaret Atwood has a brilliant way with words. In this novel, a mystery is slowly revealed through the narration of an older, eighty-something year old Iris as she reflects on her childhood and her days of marriage to the powerful and manipulative Richard Griffen and his sister, Winifred. From the start, we know that Iris had a sister who died suddenly - "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." The reader is immediately left with the question as to whether this death was accidental or intentional.

Using a combination of newspaper clippings and a memoir of sorts as Iris writes her life story in a diary, the reader becomes privy to these events in what feels like a very intimate setting. Iris begins her retelling of these events with little anecdotes thrown in from her present day life - usually bits of grumbling or complaints in the fashion of the bitter old lady stereotype. For the most part, these were amusing and lightened up the tone of the book from time to time. My favorite portions of this novel were those that retold the childhood of both Iris and Laura. Iris talks of her grandparents, her parents, and the family home called Avilion. I loved her description of her grandmother:

"The planning and decoration of this house were supervised by my Grandmother Adelia. She died before I was born, but from what I've heard she was as smooth as silk and as cool as a cucumber, but with a will like a bone saw. Also she went in for Culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that Culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn't yet seen Hitler at the opera house."

Iris also introduces us to a series of secondary characters, including Alex Thomas, a young man suspected of being a Communist rabble-rouser of sorts. Alex Thomas becomes acquainted with the Chase girls and their family, against the better judgment of their devoted housekeeper, Reenie. Reenie is perhaps my favorite character! Responsible for the majority of the Chase girls' upbringing, she dished out some priceless advice! "Reenie said a girl alone with a man should be able to hold a dime between her knees." Alex Thomas meets with an unnamed lover in some questionable and squalid locations as he goes into hiding. To this lover he narrates a "story within a story" titled "The Blind Assassin". I have to admit that these sections of the book were my least favorite. Alex fabricates a science fiction adventure based on the planet Zycron. Initially this was quite confusing. Once the confusion faded, I became slightly irritated, despite my curiosity as to the identity of the lover. For the most part, however, I couldn’t wait to get back to the more appealing story as told by Iris.

By the end of Iris' narrative, the seemingly distinct portions of this novel become clear and an interesting twist comes to light. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to fans of Atwood or those who like a slowly paced mystery with some good historical elements. I personally would have preferred not to be subjected to the details of the pulp-fiction type sci-fi story despite the fact that I came to understand its purpose. 4 stars

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll start with a bit of personal baggage, because my first exposure to Margaret Atwood's writing was The Handmaid's Tale, which I read when I was young because my parents had a copy. That book is probably the best known of her early novels, which does her a disservice, as it seemed one-dimensional, humourless and cold (though I would almost certainly be more charitable if I re-read it now).

This got me thinking about how one's perceptions of a writer can be shaped by how and where we first experience them, and how much can be lost if something unrepresentative gets overhyped or taught at schools and colleges, or even how reading something before you are ready for it can prejudice you. I did make one further attempt a few years later when I picked up a second hand copy of the story collection Bluebeard's Egg, but to be honest I don't really remember that. Since then I have never returned to Atwood until now. This seems criminally negligent in the light of the Blind Assassin, which is brilliant, so many thanks to the 21st Century Literature group for choosing this book for one of this month's group discussions.

The Blind Assassin has quite a complex structure. It begins with Iris, an embittered old woman remembering her younger sister Laura's death, a suicide that was covered up. Laura has a fanatical posthumous following due to a book, also called the Blind Assassin. This forms most of the sections that alternate with Iris's memoir, and it tells the story of its writer's affair with a fugitive writer and the stories he and the narrator make up about a mythical society. This novel within a novel (a device that reminded my quite strongly of A.S. Byatt's Babel Tower, another book that contained excerpts from a novel written by one of its characters) is itself interspersed with pithy newspaper articles which give the "official" version of the events of Laura and Iris's lives, and their families.

The plot is ultimately much more complex than the family story or the novel within a novel, but the whole thing has much to say about sibling rivalry and secrets. Iris recounts her own family story, the story of their childhood and the story of her disastrous marriage to a wealthy but insensitive businessman and her relationship with his scheming sister. This account does occasionally come close to getting tedious, but is invariably redeemed by wry observations and occasional clues that the story is not as simple as it seems at first glance, many of which are much more significant than they appear initially.

The denouement is brilliantly plotted and very moving. This is a wonderful, clever and richly nuanced book which thoroughly deserved its Booker Prize. I will be reading more of Margaret Atwood's work.

[Jenn(ifer) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Let's forget about the tongue-tied lightning.Let's undress just like cross-eyed strangers.This is not a joke, so please stop smiling.What was I thinking when I said it didn't hurt?"

****

I need to stop reading on trains. I could feel the tears welling, the water rising, brimming, and then spilling over before anything bad even happened. But I could feel it coming. And I braced myself for the inevitable.

Heart break. Loss. Old age. Why can’t we start old and get younger?

****

Tennyson wrote, ‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ I call bullshit. I can’t be placated by that. People who believe that are the same ones who believe in soul mates and destiny and happily ever after. What remains when love is lost? A suffocating, gnawing ache? Contempt? Melancholy and the infinite sadness? Certainly not warm fuzzy memories. So why isn't it better to have never loved at all?

I don’t mean to sound jaded, it’s just that this book brought back too many memories.

That’s the thing about memories, you never know when they’ll creep up behind you stealthily, tiptoeing like a villain in a silent film.

****

I suppose you want to know a bit about the book.

The Blind Assassin tells the story of Iris Chase Griffen. Iris is now 83 years old and she wants what we all want I suppose, she wants to believe that her life has meant something. And more than that, she wants to tell the truth. We feel what it must be like for her, at one time wealthy and glamorous and loved. Now the fortune is gone, she is alone and old age has crept up on her and taken away everything it can. “Yet what has become of my real clothes? Surely these shapeless pastels and orthopedic shoes belong to someone else. But they’re mine; worse, they suit me now.”Iris tells us her story, partly through a diary or a journal and partly through the observations of two young lovers in stolen moments.

I’m really not big on rehashing the plot in reviews and I’m sure you can find plenty of them that will do exactly that. The salient message is this: Iris loved fiercely and suffered tremendous loss. As we all do; as we all will. For now I guess I will bask in the rosy glow of youth for as long as I can, before everything I love withers and dies.

****

I could have summed this all up with the same Bolaño quote I used in my SD review “…What a shame that time passes, don’t you think? What a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.”

****
I am trying to break your heart. I am trying to break your heart.

I am trying to break your heart…

[Glenn Sumi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I’m conflicted about this one.

Margaret Atwood is a literary deity. I’m impressed by the ambition of this big, sprawling novel, surely her most audacious stand-alone book. I adore the vivid period detail about Toronto, where I live, and the fictional Port Ticonderoga, which feels like a composite of various Southern Ontario towns I’ve visited. I enjoy how the various elements of the book eventually come together.

And yet...

There’s something contrived and coldly schematic about The Blind Assassin. It feels overly conceptualized. Instead of a beating heart it's got a pacemaker. And it could have used a more ruthless editor.

The complex narrative consists of several strands. The main one is narrated by Iris Chase Griffen, who grew up the daughter of a prominent Port Ticonderoga family and then, at 18, was basically pawned off by her father to become the wife of a powerful industrialist with political aspirations. Now in her early 80s, she’s poor, mostly alone (except for visits by Myra, the daughter of her family’s former housekeeper) and living in a house in her home town.

Her story begins with the remarkable sentence: “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.”

Laura was driving Iris’s car, and Iris is required to identify the body. Was it suicide? Foul play? Something in between? Surely Iris knows more than she’s letting on. Over the next 520 pages, crisscrossing decades and taking many detours via automobile, train and luxury cruise ship – and even some interplanetary travel – the story arrives, haltingly, at its destination.

Interspersed with Iris’s sections are clippings from newspapers and magazines to give us a more objective look at events. And then there are chapters from “The Blind Assassin,” a novel-within-a-novel about an affair between a wealthy, naive girl and a left-leaning writer of pulp sci-fi. It was published, posthumously, under the name Laura Chase in 1947, became a bestseller and made her a celebrity.

Gradually the various strands of the book come together in a satisfying, if not always surprising, way.

The writing is poetic yet occasionally overblown. Here’s a passage about Avilion, the mansion where Iris and Laura grew up:

Avilion had once had an air of stability that amounted to intransigence – a large, dumpy boulder plunked down in the middle of the stream of time, refusing to be moved for anybody – but now it was dog-eared, apologetic, as if it were about to collapse in on itself. It no longer had the courage of its own pretensions.

That’s a LOT of imagery. Boulder in stream of time? Sure. But do we also need it to be "dog-eared," "apologetic," "collapsing" and lacking in "courage"? All in one mixed metaphor paragraph?

There are some big blanks in the narrative. I don’t understand why the cruel industrialist Richard Griffen wanted to marry Iris. Was it only for her connections to her family’s business? Her beauty? Surely there were other prominent families he – and his snobbish sister, Winifred, one of Atwood's wickedest villains – could attach himself to. Two other spoilery points: 1) If Richard had designs on Laura all the time, there should have been earlier clues. 2) And later on, I find it implausible that Iris could carry on her affair under the watchful eye of the two siblings. Surely they would want to ensure the Griffen heir was Richard's.

In fact, the character of Griffen is so vague Iris gives us this statement near the end:

I’ve failed to convey Richard, in any rounded sense. He remains a cardboard cutout. I know that. I can’t truly describe him, I can’t get a precise focus: he’s blurred, like the face in some wet, discarded newspaper. Even at the time he appeared to me smaller than life, although larger than life as well.

Hmm… Is this an old woman, Iris, explaining her ambivalent relationship to her husband? Or is it instead author Atwood realizing she’s failed to create a convincing character and forestalling any criticism?

Speaking of characters, a few seem abandoned by the roadside. Bohemian sculptor Callista Fitzsimmons is a vivid presence early on in the book (she dates Iris and Laura’s widowed father), but then she’s discarded. Even Laura herself remains opaque, but perhaps that’s one of the points of the book.

History buffs won’t be entirely satisfied. There are pages and pages about fashions, luxury voyages and who was dancing with whom at what party, but the entire second world war is ridiculously glossed over in a page or two near the end, as if Atwood realized she had to wrap things up quickly.

And after a while, Iris’s narration begins to fall into a predictable groove. She opens chapters by describing the weather, bitching about her physical mobility or some other complaint, and then continues where she left off. But I do like that the book illustrates her finding her voice: in real life and in setting down her story. (It's cool that her lack of voice is symbolized in the "Blind Assassin" narrative by the mute sacrificial victim.) By the end she’s a much stronger person than the meek, passive, naive teenager who married Griffen.

My biggest problem with the book, however, concerns the “Blind Assassin” passages. I would have believed them more had Atwood written them in a more convincing period style. The "book" was published in 1947, and penned up to a decade before then, yet the prose feels too contemporary, its staccato rhythms too much like Atwood’s own. Surely a pastiche, between-the-wars style would have made the book more credible. I also can't believe it would have been a bestseller.

So: a mixed bag. Nice period details. Ambitious scope. And in Iris, Atwood has created a delightfully crusty, entertaining and fascinatingly unreliable guide.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having absolutely loved Atwood's "A Handmaid's Tale," I decided to try out "The Blind Assassin."

Verdict? It was... okay. The writing was really great, but everything else kind of bored me -- the characters, the plot, the novel within the novel within the novel. By the time the book worked itself up to its climax, I had long since lost interest. I was just trying to plod through and finish the thing.

At times, I was more eager to find out what happened to the blind assassin and the girl without a tongue in the sacrificial temple than I was to find out what was really going on between the Chase sisters. While I found Atwood's passages about old age and mortality touchingly beautiful, I also found them repetitive.

Yawn. This book took me over a week to finish. That's evidence of something... I'm not giving up on Atwood, but this one was a C+, at best, just for boring me.

[Sean Barrs · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Blind Assassin is a bloated monster of a book.

To put it plainly: it was slow, dull and padded out. In my estimation this is a 400 page story wrapped-up in a 650 page package. There is so much material here that adds absolutely nothing to the story, themes or characters. It is full of pointless inane details that were excruciating to read through. It is loaded with unnecessary day to day things that did nothing but drag the book out. So much needed chopping away to make the novel more precise and readable.

Despite this though, there is still a good book here buried beneath the excessive prose.

"Last night I watched the weather channel, as is my habit. Elsewhere in the world there are floods: roiling brown water, bloated cows floating by, survivors huddled on rooftops. Thousands have drowned. Global warming is held accountable: people must stop burning things up, it is said. Gasoline, oil, whole forests. But they won’t stop. Greed and hunger lash them on, as usual."

There’s something powerful and exacting about a retrospective narrator, one who looks back and analyses all the mistakes that have been made over the course of a lifetime. Whilst this isn’t a book focused on climate change, it is a book about regret and coming to terms with the greed of human behaviour and this idea is captured perfectly with this passage. As Iris watches the devastating effects of war and greed, she realises that the people in her own life embody some of the worst traits known to man.

Unusually, this is a book where we have the ending right from the start. We know how its all going to finish and slowly, ever so slowly, Atwood begins to reveal how everything happened. This kept the novel moving forward, but at a snail pace. There are quite a few surprises along the way and a big reversal during the final few pages, which, for me, completely saved the book.

What else did I like?

The novel is undeniably very clever. There are stories within stories within stories and it’s the reason Atwood won the man book prize in 2000. It’s creative and intelligent. There is no other novel, to my knowledge, that is put together quite like this. It is told through retrospective narration, newspaper clippings and a novel Laura Chase (the narrator’s sister) has written. There’s a book within the book! It’s a great idea but if experience has taught me anything, the judges of the booker prize always place literary originality over literary quality. And that can be a great thing, but not always. This story had no momentum and it dragged and dragged and dragged and dragged.

I was so close to giving up on a couple of occasions, but I was determined to finish this because I know how great Atwood can be. And there were glimpses of her skill here, in a watered-down form. Don’t get me wrong, I think The Blind Assassin is a good book but the sad thing is, it truly could have been a great book had it been shorter and more to the point. I felt bored when I was reading, the same way you might feel bored when an octogenarian tells you a forty-five minute story that could have been wrapped up in ten. And that's the problem: this is simply too big for the amount of story it actually contained.

I liked the critique on capitalism. I liked how the villain of the novel (yes there is one and no names mentioned) was the walking embodiment of it, along with destructive consumerism and expansion. I liked how subtle the manipulation tactics used by various characters were, to the point where the narrator has no clue she was being played by multiple people at the time. When she got older, she learnt her mistakes, and that’s important. Most of all I liked the ending. I liked what was kept hidden until the final few pages.

“The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.”

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[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wrenching story of two sisters caught up in a tragedy beyond imagining. They become adults in the horrible period between the two world wars, in the belly of the Depression. Was there ever a more miserable time? Iris and Laura Chase are beautiful and smart, but naive. They have never been given any guidance on how to live. Their mother died when they were young from a miscarriage and their father is a hopeless drunk. They came from a wealthy family who owned a lucrative button factory, but when the Depression hit, everything fell apart. Iris is forced by her father into a marriage with an unscrupulous, rich man. Laura, an idealist, could not be coerced in this way, but she is corrupted eventually, as well as Iris.

We learn their story through a sort of diary that Iris is writing as an old woman. She is wise now, but her wisdom comes too late.

[Julie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atwood's greatest novel. Flawless.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars

I can’t give the book 5 stars, because I know I will never read it again. The story is its own spoiler. But until it’s done, it’s a dark, almost gothic page turner.

I usually start my reviews with something about the author, but unusually for me I’ve already read three books by this author (the dystopian Maddaddam Trilogy). Can you blame me for thinking that everyone must know this author, if I’ve read four novels by her? Of course you can’t.

First off, this novel is in no way a science fiction novel, even though that phrase is seen now and then in reviews. A novel that has science fiction elements is involved, but it’s not the novel you hold in your hand when you read The Blind Assassin (BA). It’s inside that novel you’re holding. And darned if it doesn’t have the same name as the book in your hand.

So you won’t believe how dense I am. I never really made the connection between the sort-of SF novel written by one of the book’s characters (called “BA”), and some of the chapters in the book in my hands that were actually titled The Blind Assassin: …. I simply noticed that these chapters were written by a normal narrator, whereas the other chapters (if they weren’t brief newspaper notices) were written by a character in the first person. Well, are you confused yet?

The novel is actually an evocative historical novel, about a family in Canada, starting in the nineteenth century, building a modest empire of button factories, whose granddaughters are Iris and Laura, growing up in the early years of the twentieth century. The story and its characters (the ones that survive) move through the first World War, the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary, the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, the second World War, and several decades further for the luckiest(?).

We gradually learn more about these two girls, their parents, and the men they become involved with. But much of the information is ambiguous, equivocal, obscure – we get clues about something, think ah yes, so that’s what’s going on, then later well maybe I was wrong, then later yet no, I was right the first time. And new obscurities pop up, casting a veil over things that seemed clear earlier on.

It’s a dark novel. Most of the characters are a little bit off, not really dangerous, but finely drawn to make this reader feel unsure whether he would want to know such people. The women are either mistreated quite severely, or mistreat others in that way (particularly other women).

As the story progresses, both it and the narrators turn more and more inward, things becoming ever more surreal, little left of their lives but memories, anticipations, wishes, fears, pain. Much of the narrative actually occurs within dreams.

Atwood’s writing is mesmerizing, and draws the reader relentlessly on as the stakes get higher. Here’s one of her sequences, from a BA chapter:

Now she imagines him dreaming. She imagines him dreaming of her, as she is dreaming of him. Through a sky the color of wet slate they fly towards each other on dark invisible wings, searching, searching, doubling back, drawn by hope and longing, baffled by fear. In their dreams they touch, they intertwine, it’s more like a collision, and that is the end of the flying. They fall to earth, fouled parachutists, botched and cindery angels, love streaming out behind them like torn silk. Enemy groundfire comes up to meet them.

Though I had a pretty good idea of what the Truth of Atwood’s ambiguities would be, I was completely in the dark of how Atwood the writer would bring this story to a close narrative-wise. How would she wrap this tale up? Splendidly! Not a happy ending really, but weepy fellow that I am, she never wrote anything that made me tear up until a single sentence on the final page. Then I was overcome.

A great, great story.

[Em Lost In Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over."

4.5*

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating, bold blend of genres, with some uneven pacing, in the first Booker Prize winning book of Atwood

When rereading this book, which blends a Canadian early twentieth century family chronicle with pulp science fiction in a clandestine romance setting, I nearly lost my interest around halfway. This surprised me, since The Blind Assassin used to be my favourite Atwood novel. The parts narrated by Iris looking back on her life and her sisters life are well written but lack a real driving force, also because many outcomes and untimely deaths are so very clear from the start. Also the old age reflection started to feel old (no pun intended) and a bit overdone.

The scifi/romance parts were more thrilling but also grinded to a halt halfway since the lovers no longer met and the story became a bit esoteric and Jeanette Winterson like (who is also a favourite writer of mine, but who tends to the lyrical, where you’re unsure about what is really alluded to in terms of corporal events).
Finally I felt that the characters around Iris never really fully get into focus, not even Laura as her sister, which might be intentional given the high age of the narrator looking back, but which also didn’t help draw me into the story.

With the revelations and the closer and closer tying together of both storylines the last part of the book was a breeze to read again, certainly paired with tension flowing from the realisation that Iris is not the most complete and objective storyteller, leading me to flip back a lot to reevaluate and savour earlier parts of the story.
Also the prose of Margaret Atwood is razor sharp and beautiful as always, and I did feel really sorry for both Iris and Laura at some points in the story. In the end I however felt I did need to adjust my stars from a remembered 5 to a solid 4 stars.

Finally, rereading the book I was not only reminded of Jeanette Winterson but also of Margaret Atwoods own Oryx And Crake, which also feature a solitary and aging narrator and a seperate storyline which first seems to be wildly different but in the end seamlessly fits into the other one. For me that's a new insight I’d hadn't noticed before.

[Jeannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! There is a lot going on and in this book, I wasn't exactly sure where this story was going at first. I kept on reading because it's Margaret Atwood. It all comes together in the end though. I am so glad I stuck with it! Loved Laura. This is one of those books that will stay with me for a long time and one that I would read again.
Margaret Atwood has become one of my favorite writers.
Highly recommend!

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

A masterful, accomplished piece of writing from Atwood that showcases her literary adroitness, her ability to operate across genres, her wonderfully empathetic sensibility, and her political consciousness.

Masquerading as a between-the-wars family saga at first glance, this is a narrative which becomes increasingly complex and layered as stories pile up upon stories: Iris' tale of her present as she's reaching the end of her long life, her written narrative of her family history that spans the twentieth century, the extracts from the cult novel, 'The Blind Assassin', which tells of the troubled affair between a pair of unnamed lovers, and the pulp novel-within-a-novel that one lover tells to the other, partly to keep anxious emotions at bay.

As we would expect from Atwood, these stories reflect upon and refract each other, not least in thematics of blindness and the broad concept of assassination, often figurative. But this is no cold novel of ideas: Iris is flesh and blood both in her cantankerous, vulnerable present as she approaches the end of her life and in her younger self. Her sister Laura is more elusive but deliberately so, I think - partly a reflection of the way Iris herself doesn't quite understand her, however close, in some ways, they may be.

Twentieth century politics are deftly woven into the book from the impact of the Depression on a small Canadian town, the struggle between communist sympathisers and more conservative capitalist elements, through to a subtle, understated indictment of a patriarchal regime which keeps young women repressed, contained and, ideally, helpless. Images of incarceration and claustrophobia abound, along with the limited, interspersed freedoms that our pair of lovers only sometimes experience albeit in small, shady, rooms and, more potently, via the imagination.

That rare animal, a book which is both eminently accessible and full of story while also being literary enough to keep your mind as well as your emotions engaged - and with a sense of humour, too (Iris and Laura's tutors!). I confess, I wept a little at the end.

[Jan-Maat]

Impressively hefty, but convinces me ultimately that Atwood has written much better books.

An elderly woman remembers her life. The story flickers between present, past and pulp science fiction bah! That's just everyday life, you are probably saying.

She remembers: her lover, a hack writer of pulp science fiction and political radical. Her husband, an industrialist with dubious sexual tastes ie illegal in many jurisdictions and habits. Her sister, artistic but inarticulate. Her sister-in-law, a grand dame and prepared to defend her family reputation. Her father, WWI veteran, failed industrialist, troubled soul and suicide, his lover an artist. The mysterious book that scandalised society and has won fans to the present day that apparently her sister wrote.

Their lives are intertwined. The atmosphere shifts from the free to the oppressive. The reader feels some pieces drop into place and searches for others. It is all very nicely done, one experiences unease and uncertainty, and says "a-ha" to oneself at the right moments, it has something of the feel of a fin de siecle painting to it, the symbolism at first obscure, then in a heartbeat, heavy handed and obvious. At the centre of the story I am reminded of lines from King Lear half forgotten from school: Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. I feel a good degree of regret at this book, as well as a certain sympathy towards it, it works very hard, it is skilful and clever, but the more it goes on, the more it reminds me that Atwood has impressed me more elsewhere. I am haunted by the central apex of childhood bullying in Cat's eye, warmly amused by by the attempts to understand the crime in Alias Grace. This for me just wasn't visceral, perhaps it is too obvious from the structure that there will be a train crash and as one gets closer what will cause it, the extent of the fatalities and the lasting injuries of the survivors are too predictable? Of course you say, it is meant to be a tragedy.

[Andy Marr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good Lord, but this was dull... 🥱

[BrokenTune · Rating 5 out of 5]

"They ache like history: things long done with, that still reverberate as pain. When the ache is bad enough it keeps me from sleeping. Every night I yearn for sleep, I strive for it; yet it flutters on ahead of me like a sooty curtain."

The Blind Assassin won the Booker Prize in 2000, but please don't hold it against the book, because, apparently, in 2000 the judges got it right.

I had long been intrigued by this book because of the cover - it looks very stylish - but I had no idea what the book would be about and almost expected this would be another one of Atwood's dystopian speculative fictions.
I was completely wrong. All my preconceptions were totally unwarranted. (Tho, there is a story within the story that is set on a different planet. And there is an alien. Well, in a manner of speaking.)

The Blind Assassin is a family saga set in Ontario and focuses on the lives of Iris and her sister Laura, beginning with one of the most hard-hitting paragraphs I have read recently:

"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left of her but charred smithereens."

From there on we get the story of the sisters told in flashbacks through Iris' memory. However, from each memory, we also get this sense that there is much more to the story, that Iris is teasing our patience.

"No: I shouldn’t have married anyone. That would have saved a lot of trouble."

Surprisingly, this slow reveal never gets boring. Atwood weaves in so many layers that each part remains interesting as its own story, but the big picture is only revealed at the end.

In the book, we have the story of a family dynasty, that is being threatened by new money. Then we have class struggle in the early 20th century. We have have a depiction of society and history of the 20th century. We have love. We have cruelty. We have fantasy and stark reality. We have style and ugliness, powerlessness and emancipation. We have submission and we have revenge.

What we don't really have in the book is hate. Having said that, I can't remember the last time I as a reader wanted to punch a character so much as I wanted to punch one in The Blind Assassin. So, even though there is not much hate in the book, there was at least one hateful character, and even though this character's fate is somewhat ambiguous, I am satisfied with my interpretation of it.

This is not the only element of mystery in this book but the one that made it hard for me to put the book down.

I'm sorry it is difficult to describe the plot, and I don't want to give anything away, but it really is not that often that a book fascinates me on so many levels.

And of course, there is Atwood's gorgeous writing.

"The school orchestra struck up with squeaks and flats, and we sang “O Canada!,” the words to which I can never remember because they keep changing them. Nowadays they do some of it in French, which once would have been unheard of. We sat down, having affirmed our collective pride in something we can’t pronounce."

I loved the way Atwood made the characters come to life. Each of them had their own quirks, their own edges - even the supporting characters - which made them feel very real.

On top of that, the main character, Iris, a sassy and cynical old lady, just did not put up with any nonsense. As funny as this sounds, Iris' comments also made me think about some of the issues she raises - even where she claims to dismiss them with snide remarks.

"I knew enough to know that the only thing expected of me was that I not disgrace myself. I could have been back again beside the podium, or at some interminable dinner, sitting next to Richard, keeping my mouth shut. If asked, which was seldom, I used to say that my hobby was gardening. A half-truth at best, though tedious enough to pass muster."

As you can see from the star rating, I absolutely loved this book. In fact, I would now count it as one of my favourites. Atwood has this brilliant ability to tell a gripping story and relate hard issues without being sanctimonious or crass. The book will keep me thinking for some time to come still.

"Some alert functionary caught my arm and slotted me back into my chair. Back into obscurity. Back into the long shadow cast by Laura. Out of harm’s way. But the old wound has split open, the invisible blood pours forth. Soon I’ll be emptied."

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is a crazy ice meteor shot through the heart of a Virginia Woolf novel. The further you get into it, the more your fingers feel every fiber on every rough cut page. You don't just begin to smell the book; page after page, you almost begin to taste the ink. Atwood doesn't write from the head, the crotch or the gut. She soul-butts you. Her words bite and kick your trash on every level.

[Sawsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

رواية مزدحمة تجمع بين حكايات مُتشابكة
تكتب ايريس تشاس الشخصية الرئيسية في الرواية قصة حياتها بالتفاصيل
تكشف لحفيدتها البعيدة عنها عن الأسرار المخفية طوال العمر الطويل
ويتناوب الحكي بين حاضر ايريس المرأة المُسنة الوحيدة وذكريات الماضي
خلال السرد عرض لفصول رواية عن عالم خيالي عنوانها "القاتل الأعمى
وبالتدريج وبالوصول للنهاية تترابط الحكايات والشخصيات
تمر آتوود على ملامح اقتصادية واجتماعية في بدايات القرن العشرين
طبيعة حياة المرأة, تحولات الحياة, قيود التقاليد الاجتماعية
علاقات الحب, الضعف والاستغلال, والواقع بين المظاهر والحقيقة

تركيبة الرواية مميزة لكنها تفتقد متعة السرد