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The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
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The Blind Assassin (original 2000; edition 2001)

by Margaret Atwood

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
16,427384313 (3.93)1 / 1069
Fiction. Mystery. Science Fiction. Historical Fiction. HTML:The bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments weaves together strands of gothic suspense, romance, and science fiction into one utterly spellbinding narrative, beginning with the mysterious death of a young woman named Laura Chase in 1945.

Decades later, Lauraâ??s sister Iris recounts her memories of their childhood, and of the dramatic deaths that have punctuated their wealthy, eccentric familyâ??s history. Intertwined with Irisâ??s account are chapters from the scandalous novel that made Laura famous, in which two illicit lovers amuse each other by spinning a tale of a blind killer on a distant planet.

These richly layered stories-within-stories gradually illuminate the secrets that have long haunted the Chase family, coming together in a brilliant and astonishing fin
… (more)
Member:mschif
Title:The Blind Assassin
Authors:Margaret Atwood
Info:Virago Press Ltd (2001), Edition: New Ed, Paperback, 641 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:None

Work Information

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2000)

  1. 192
    Atonement by Ian McEwan (browner56)
    browner56: Two superbly crafted explorations of the cathartic power that comes from the act of writing.
  2. 70
    The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (rbtanger)
  3. 51
    To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (the_awesome_opossum)
  4. 41
    Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson (Smiler69)
  5. 41
    Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald (jhedlund, djmccord73)
    djmccord73: family history, secrets
  6. 20
    A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (sturlington)
    sturlington: Writers and books within books.
  7. 20
    The Hours by Michael Cunningham (sturlington)
  8. 10
    The Pursuit of Happiness by Douglas Kennedy (Pedrolina)
  9. 21
    The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell (rbtanger)
  10. 10
    Stella Descending by Linn Ullmann (KayCliff)
    KayCliff: Laura Chase in The Blind Assassin falls to her death from a bridge over a ravine, just as Stella falls to hers from a roof. The Blind Assassin is concerned with finding out why Laura fell, with newspaper reports given, excerpts from a novel quoted, and passages of narration from Laura's sister -- all out of chronological sequence; just as the cause of Stella's fall is sought through Ullmann's novel by a variety of narrators, with excerpts from a video, all simililarly out of chronological order. Both Stella and Laura act as nurses, and fall prey to unprincipled men. Both novels include a pair of sisters whose mother dies when they are young, leaving the elder girl to take care of the younger; children with absent or unknown fathers; and someone very old, near to their own death, who loved Laura/Stella. Laura's sister fancies, `there was no floor to my room: I was suspended in the air, about to plummet. My fall would be endless -- endlessly down'. Stella's daughter tells her sister, `Mama fell off a roof, Mama's falling still. She falls and falls and never hits the ground'.… (more)
  11. 33
    The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss (PrincessPaulina)
    PrincessPaulina: Main characters are seniors, reexamining their biographies at the end of their lives.
  12. 00
    Glass Mountain by Cynthia Voigt (electronicmemory)
    electronicmemory: Two books that are slow, close character studies of our protagonists. They both have lovely prose, vivid imagery and nuance.
  13. 11
    The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty (thea-block)
    thea-block: Pictures of the whole a woman's life, exploring how early decisions effect the rest of their lives.
  14. 34
    Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (electronicmemory)
    electronicmemory: Historical settings come alive in these novels about the complexities of life among close-knit high society social circles.
  15. 01
    Autumn Laing by Alex Miller (jll1976)
    jll1976: Similar themes and style. Also a 'death bed confessional'.
  16. 78
    The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Anonymous user)
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    My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey (PghDragonMan)
    PghDragonMan: Deception is layered on deception until even the truth looks false.
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» See also 1069 mentions

English (376)  Spanish (2)  Dutch (2)  Italian (1)  Hebrew (1)  Finnish (1)  French (1)  Norwegian (1)  All languages (385)
Showing 1-5 of 376 (next | show all)
The Blind Assassin is a work of historical fiction layered with characteristics of drama, noir, and an embedded narrative. It primarily follows Iris Chase, her sister Laura, and their ambiguous relationship with science fiction author Alex Thomas. The namesake of the book refers to the science fiction novel believed to be penned by Thomas, however its authorship is complicated by Atwood's deft interplay between reality and fiction.This novel won the 2000 Booker Prize.
  RedeemedRareBooks | Mar 11, 2024 |
You can open this to any page and find beautiful writing to think about for days. The brief sci fi framed story alone is better than most sci fi novels I've read. Excellent commentary on the not very inclusive history of pulp sci fi. In this book most things are revealed in a subtle way to let the reader figure out most of it, which is so much more powerful. ( )
  lneukirch | Feb 4, 2024 |
After hearing too many great reviews of this book, and reading several Atwood books I really enjoyed, I may have had too many high expectations for this novel. It really is not sci-fi, and while I suppose the stories do all connect finally near the end, I never was really drawn into any of the threads of this book. The men are all sexist jerks, the women are all differently awful, and the story was boring. I was just enough engaged with the story to be irritated at how clueless Iris is, and how pathetic Laura is. They just accept Reenie's anxieties about life and sex, and absorb all her prejudices about anyone and everyone who is not a member of the right race and class. They are growing up in a world with public libraries and even with all Reenie's annoying ideas about parenting, surely both girls could have wandered off to make friends with local kids. So, the fact that both girls turned into such pathetic women bugged me, because they were so complacent and let themselves become adults without knowing much about anything. ( )
  JBarringer | Dec 15, 2023 |
Well written but seemingly more than half of it was unnecessary, keep wondering what does this have to do with the story, guessed the twist ( )
  jimifenway | Nov 1, 2023 |
Although very well-written with an interesting narrative structure, I found it difficult to get immersed in the story. ( )
  mmparker | Oct 24, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 376 (next | show all)
Die Lebensgeschichte der Iris hebt sich wohltuend von jenen Romanen ab, die junge Frauen der 'besseren' Gesellschaft nach einer privilegierten Kindheit in ein Erwachsenendasein ohne BrĂĽche und Krisen fĂĽhren. Dennoch ist es schade, dass Margaret Atwood ihrer Heldin letztlich so wenig 'Mumm' mitgibt - es mĂĽssen dreiĂźig Jahre von Iris' Leben vergehen, bis sie zum ersten Mal aufbegehrt.

Margaret Atwood erzählt Iris' und Lauras Geschichte auf drei Ebenen: anhand von Iris' Rückblick, Lauras Manuskript und diversen Zeitungsausschnitten. Atwood hat mit "Der blinde Mörder" nicht nur die Geschichte eines Frauenlebens geschrieben, sondern auch einen historischen Roman, eine Liebesgeschichte, eine Sciencefiction-Story und die Geschichte zweier Schwestern. Sie belohnt das Interesse des Lesers mit einer Geschichte von außergewöhnlicher Dichte, der es gelingt, die sozialen, industriellen und politischen Ereignisse in einer kanadischen Kleinstadt nachzuzeichnen und eine Chronik des 20. Jahrhunderts darzustellen.
 
Margaret Atwood poses a provocative question in her new novel, "The Blind Assassin." How much are the bad turns of one's life determined by things beyond our control, like sex and class, and how much by personal responsibility? Unlike most folks who raise this question so that they can wag their finger -- she's made her bed, and so on -- Atwood's foray into this moral terrain is complex and surprising. Far from preaching to the converted, Atwood's cunning tale assumes a like-minded reader only so that she can argue, quite persuasively, from the other side.
added by stephmo | editSalon.com, Karen Houppert (Dec 12, 2000)
 
In her tenth novel, Margaret Atwood again demonstrates that she has mastered the art of creating dense, complex fictions from carefully layered narratives, making use of an array of literary devices - flashbacks, multiple time schemes, ambiguous, indeterminate plots - and that she can hook her readers by virtue of her exceptional story-telling skills. The Blind Assassin is not a book that can easily be put to one side, in spite of its length and the fact that its twists and turns occasionally try the patience; yet it falls short of making the emotional impact that its suggestive and slippery plot at times promises.
added by stephmo | editThe Guardian, Alex Clark (Sep 30, 2000)
 
Ms. Atwood's absorbing new novel, ''The Blind Assassin,'' features a story within a story within a story -- a science-fiction yarn within a hard-boiled tale of adultery within a larger narrative about familial love and dissolution. The novel is largely unencumbered by the feminist ideology that weighed down such earlier Atwood novels as ''The Edible Woman'' and ''The Handmaid's Tale,'' and for the most part it is also shorn of those books' satiric social vision. In fact, of all the author's books to date, ''The Blind Assassin'' is most purely a work of entertainment -- an expertly rendered Daphne du Maurieresque tale that showcases Ms. Atwood's narrative powers and her ardent love of the Gothic.
 
In her ingenious new tale of love, rivalry, and deception, The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood interweaves several genres — a confessional memoir, a pulp fantasy novel, newspaper clippings — to tease out the secrets behind the 1945 death of 25-year-old socialite Laura Chase.
 

» Add other authors (26 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Margaret Atwoodprimary authorall editionscalculated
Belletti, RaffaellaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dionne, MargotNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pulice, Mario JCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tarkka, HannaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Imagine the monarch Agha Mohammad Khan, who orders the entire population of the city of Kerman murdered or blinded—no exceptions. His praetorians set energetically to work. They line up the inhabitants, slice off the heads of the adults, gouge out the eyes of the children. . . . Later, processions of blinded children leave the city. Some, wandering around in the countryside, lose their way in the desert and die of thirst. Other groups reach inhabited settlements...singing songs about the extermination of the citizens of Kerman. . . .

—Ryszard Kapuściński
I swam, the sea was boundless, I saw no shore.
Tanit was merciless, my prayers were answered.
O you who drown in love, remember me.

— Inscription on a Carthaginian Funerary Urn
The word is a flame burning in a dark glass.

—Sheila Watson
Dedication
First words
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.
Quotations
Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up the bright shadow cast by its absence.
What virtue was once attached to this notion—of going beyond your strength, of not sparing yourself, of ruining your health! Nobody is born with that kind of selflessness: it can be acquired only by the most relentless discipline, a crushing-out of natural inclination, and by my time the knack or secret of it must have been lost.
I'm sorry, I'm just not interested.
Or perhaps she's just softening me up: she's a Baptist, she'd like me to find Jesus, or vice versa, before it's too late. That kind of thing doesn't run in her family: her mother Reenie never went in much for God. There was mutual respect, and if you were in trouble, naturally you'd call on him, as with lawyers, but as with lawyers, it would have to be bad trouble. Otherwise it didn't pay to get too mixed up with him.
She knew the family histories, or at least something about them. What she would tell me varied in relation to my age, and also in relation to how distracted she was at the time. Nevertheless, in this way I collected enough fragments of the past to make a reconstruction of it, which must have borne as much relation to the real thing as a mosaic portrait would to the original. I didn't want realism anyway: I wanted things to be highly coloured, simple in outline, without ambiguity, which is what most children want when it comes to the stories of their parents. They want a postcard.
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Fiction. Mystery. Science Fiction. Historical Fiction. HTML:The bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments weaves together strands of gothic suspense, romance, and science fiction into one utterly spellbinding narrative, beginning with the mysterious death of a young woman named Laura Chase in 1945.

Decades later, Lauraâ??s sister Iris recounts her memories of their childhood, and of the dramatic deaths that have punctuated their wealthy, eccentric familyâ??s history. Intertwined with Irisâ??s account are chapters from the scandalous novel that made Laura famous, in which two illicit lovers amuse each other by spinning a tale of a blind killer on a distant planet.

These richly layered stories-within-stories gradually illuminate the secrets that have long haunted the Chase family, coming together in a brilliant and astonishing fin

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