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The Blind Assassinby Margaret Atwood
AwardsPowells.com Staff PickEver since The Edible Woman was first published in 1969, novelist and poet Margaret Atwood has regularly reaffirmed her position at the head of the table. Atwood possesses extraordinary literary gifts. When she simultaneously taps her world-class intellect, her poet's ear for language, and her rich, idiosyncratic imagination, few writers alive can touch her. The result: such classic novels as Bodily Harm, The Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye. But if Atwood's weakness is a tendency for the didactic, The Blind Assassin may be her greatest achievement yet. For here Atwood creates a story that is as intellectually sophisticated as anything she's written, and yet she is having too much fun introducing her quirky, Gothic characters, recreating in vivid detail the charming melodrama of the thirties and forties, and hurtling her readers toward the spectacular ending of her Chinese box of a plot to ever get around to preaching. This may be why, of all her celebrated novels, The Blind Assassin was Atwood's first to win the coveted Booker Prize, and why it will undoubtedly become one of her most popular. Farley, Powells.com Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments: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.
Review:"The Blind Assassin has enough mysteries to keep even a casual reader engaged, and with respect to solutions, it is less scrupulously committed to ambiguity than Ms. Atwood's 1997 novel, Alias Grace. As with all of Ms. Atwood's recent fiction, The Blind Assassin, despite what sounds like a romantic plot, has been scoured free of any trace of sentimentality. There is a steely quality to Ms. Atwood's writing that's a bit scary but also exhilarating; no one gets away with anything, especially not her female narrators — and they know better than to try." Laura Miller, The Wall Street Journal
Review:"As she adroitly juggles three plot lines, Atwood?s inventiveness achieves a tensile energy. The alternating stories never slacken the pace; on the contrary, one reads each section breathlessly, eager to get back to the other. In sheer storytelling bravado, Atwood here surpasses even The Handmaid?s Tale and Alias Grace." Publishers Weekly
Review:"Atwood does not mess around in her riveting new tale: by the end of the first sentence, we know that the narrator's sister is dead, and after just 18 pages we learn that the narrator's husband died on a boat, that her daughter died in a fall, and that her dead husband's sister raised her granddaughter....Atwood brilliantly overlays a second story, an sf novel-within-a-novel, credited to Laura Chasen, that features nameless lovers trysting in squalor. Some readers may figure out Atwood's wrap-up before book's end. Worry not — nothing will dampen the pleasure of getting there. Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review:"Margaret Atwood is one of the greatest writers alive...Her new work is so assured, so elegant and so incandescently intelligent, she casts her contemporaries in the shade." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Review:" The first great novel of the new millennium." Newsday
Review:"Absorbing...expertly rendered...Virtuosic storytelling [is] on display. " The New York Times
Review:"Brilliant...Opulent...Atwood is a poet....as well as a contriver of fiction, and scarcely a sentence of her quick, dry yet avid prose fails to do useful work, adding to a picture that becomes enormous." John Updike, The New Yorker
Review: "Chilling...Lyrical...[Atwood's] most ambitious work to date." The Boston Globe
Review:"Hauntingly powerful....A novel of luminous prose, scalpel-precise insights and fierce characters...Atwood's new work is so assured, so elegant and so incandescently intelligent, she casts her contemporaries in the shade. " The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Review:"Grand storytelling on a grand scale...Sheerly enjoyable."The Washington Post Book World
Review:"Bewitching...A killer novel....Atwood's crisp wit and steely realism are reminiscent of Edith Wharton...A wonderfully complex narrative. " The Christian Science Monitor
Review:"A tour de force." Chicago Tribune
Synopsis:Margaret Atwood takes the art of storytelling to new heights in a dazzling new novel that unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist. For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious.
The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura'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. Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms and clichés of the 1930s and 1940s, The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience. The novel has many threads and a series of events that follow one another at a breathtaking pace. As everything comes together, readers will discover that the story Atwood is telling is not only what it seems to be--but, in fact, much more. The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it is destined to become a classic. About the AuthorMargaret Atwood lives in Toronto. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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