Reviewed: August 15th, 2024
Released: September 3rd, 2009
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. These words are spoken by Iris Chase Griffen, married at eighteen to a wealthy industrialist but now poor and eighty-two. Iris recalls her far from exemplary life, and the events leading up to her sisters death, gradually revealing the carefully guarded Chase family secrets. Among these is The Blind Assassin, a novel that earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following. Sexually explicit for its time, it was a pulp fantasy improvised by two unnamed lovers who meet secretly in rented rooms and seedy cafés. As this novel-within-a-novel twists and turns through love and jealousy, self-sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real narrative, as both move closer to war and catastrophe. Margaret Atwoods Booker Prize-winning sensation combines elements of gothic drama, romantic suspense, and science fiction fantasy in a spellbinding tale.
Helen’s Thoughts: 5/5
Wow, what a clever book. This is the first book I’ve read by Margaret Atwood, and to begin with I was a little confused, as you don’t really know who is the narrator or the characters, and there is a second story being told within the story. There are few names used at the start. Atwood deliberately leaves you blind to hook you into the story because you want to know who you are reading about and what has happened for a woman to drive her car off a bridge.
This is also the first book I’ve read without dialogue punctuation. I suppose because it is all reported instead of from the individual’s point of view, but you soon get used to it.
There is a clever use of newspaper clippings and reports to provide details of life events, and I loved the way reports of Laura Chase progressed from a debut author to an eminent author as time passed!
Atwood’s prose is amazing. She is such a keen observer of life, and captures her descriptors with great authority. It keeps you reading as you unravel the web of deceit and misdirection, the anguish and the pain. This is not a happy story. The characters are deeply flawed and set against the uncertainty of two world wars, their lives unravel and self implode. Nice twist at the end.
Well worth the read just to experience Atwood’s wonderful writing.
Purchase The Blind Assassin
Link to book on Amazon UK: ebook | Paperback
Link to book on Amazon US: ebook | Paperback
If you enjoy fantasy books then you will love my epic fantasy Sentinal series or the Romantic Fantasy SoulMist series and now Harmony, a dystopian science fantasy.
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