The Blind Assassin: A Novel by Margaret…

The Blind Assassin: A Novel (original 2000; edition 2001)

by Margaret Atwood

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Title

The Blind Assassin: A Novel

Author

Margaret Atwood

Tags

aging, Booker Winner, Canada, epistolary, favorite, fiction, fiction-in-fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, masterpiece, novel, Ontario, own, read, read by Grandma, siblings, sisters, suicide, Daily Dose entry

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Rating

Review

I've already been an Atwood admirer for a few years, but The Blind Assassin is too gorgeous to merely admire. I love it. Where it isn't exquisite, it's precise. It moves expertly between the dry, the brutally truthful, and the passionate, and brings the keenness of the author's eye to them all. Atwood describes both the elusive and the everyday with a transforming grace.

All that is merely on the level of prose, of paragraph. Her narrator is human, complex, and honest. The other characters are interesting, Laura chiefly so, of course, and I appreciate the way Iris acknowledges and interrogates her own inability to do others' characters justice. I particularly appreciated the way that Atwood drew us into the book with the mystery of Laura, and then gradually made us (well, me, at any rate) fonder and fonder of Iris. A beautiful literary bait and switch.

All this and a compelling plot. Really, if I try to think of something wrong with this book, the first thing that swims to mind is that it's more than a little intimidating to a young author. My consolation is that she was 61 when it was published. I still have some years to practice.

Publication date

2001

Publication

Anchor (2001), Paperback, 544 pages

ISBN

0385720955 / 9780385720953

Number of volumes

Number of copies

Pages

521

Dimensions

8 x 5.28 x 0.9 inches