Rating: 
Summary: The Big Disappointment
Review: I've been reading Margaret Atwood for a few years now, and have always looked forward to her books. When I received this book, I immidiately settled in for a great read. What a bitter disappointment! I have never read anything except technical manuals that I found as boring as this book. Sorry I paid full price as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Tough Love
Review: As arch as the narrative can be, and as chilly and frustratingly post-feminist the heroine, the Blind Assassin is a work that is hard to erase, once finished. Atwood has created a haunting work of such detail and complexity, in both period and emotion, that much of it feels like memory. The events seemed to have really happened, once reading has ended; and one can easily find oneself absorbed in the characters and "what happened next" dilemmas long after flipping the last page. It is true that the "mystery" of the novel seems a bit too obvious to not be solved easily by those involved; yet on second reading, this seems intentional. There are no attempts to be too cagey, and the clues put forth are very clear... It is only through later events, and through interpretation by various characters, that the obvious becomes muddy and even mysterious. In this, what I at first saw to be flaw morphs into brilliant manipulation by the author. Even the sometimes heavy-handed feminism helps chill the gothic passions and prevent them from turning too purple. At first, I felt the author was being too obvious in her intentions and politics; but the character herself seems just as determined not to fall into the helpless female trap that seemed predestined in the historical setting. It is wonderful to see how this character never becomes the victim we so often see in turn-of-the-century-set stories from the female perspective. In short, despite some perceived flaws, the work is rich and uncompromising. I may personally have made my heroine a little less eloquent, and my politics a little more vague; yet the truth is, I just can't shake The Blind Assassin from my memory, which is really what makes great fiction, anyway.
Rating: 
Summary: What a disappointment!! and for the Booker???
Review: Oh, I was so disappointed in this book! A Booker prize spent on a wonderful author's least successful novel (where were they handing out prizes when she wrote "Alias Grace"?). The story opens and is narrated by the aging Canadian Iris Griffin Chase who has had a less than positive life experience. She and her younger sister, Laura, are raised in money but their father loses much of it in the Great Depression. Iris is married off to a young wealthy associate of the father's, and Laura - who is ethereal and dreamy and weirdly naïve eventually lives with them briefly.
Laura drives a car off a bridge to her death at a young age (early in the book), and Iris, as she is recounting the story of her, basically, is suddenly muted by the interjection of an odd science fiction sort of novel (called "The Blind Assassin") in which two lovers (we never know their names, but later we are supposed to guess who they represent) meet in basements, attics and cheap hotel rooms and tell each other the strange story of the Blind Assassin. So we bounce back and forth between Iris's narration of the mysteries of her life including her sister's suspicious death, her husband's suspicious death her daughter's estrangement from her, etc) and these bizarre trysts of story-telling.
This book was incredibly long and ended in a completely unsatisfactory manner - almost as if Atwood suddenly realized how the story was droning on and on and decided it was time to end it. I did not have the same feelings of suspense during the reading of this book that some other have, and the ending did not surprise me. While I appreciated the writing (Atwood is, indeed, a marvelous writer), the character of Iris was irritating and weak and Laura's character was not given enough handling and was therefore not as captivating as she might have been. I kept wishing to 'get into' the Blind Assassin sections of the book but found that even that story line continued page after page to go absolutely nowhere. Ugh! Come on, Margaret, give us another "Alias Grace"!
Rating: 
Summary: Thank You
Review: I brought the hard bound edition when "Blind Assassin" was released and couldn't get into it. Having read your review (Amazon) and the reviews of those readers who have finished incouraged me to try again. Three hundred pages down and two hundred to go and loving every minute. I'm glad I read the customer reviews before shelving this book forever.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best written books I've ever read!
Review: I just finished The Blind Assassin. I can't say it was the BEST book I've ever read (that still remains Green Dolphin Street) but I have to say it was the best WRITTEN book I've ever read. Margaret Atwood is absolutely masterful. The way the stories are woven together and her language and syntax - just beautiful. Every page, every paragraph and every sentence is wonderfully thought out and beautifully written. I would have given it 5 stars but only for one criticism (actually, who am I to criticize!!!) - I wanted to like Iris more and I didn't.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond Intertwinement
Review: Margaret Atwood's Blind Assassin definitely proves itself to be the most masterfully designed novel that I have ever read. It's about the lives of Laura and Iris Chase and their complicated lives. In addition, the book opens a novel within a novel, dubbed the Blind Assassin by Laura Chase, in which two unnamed lovers meet in dirty backrooms. The book is told by Iris Chase, and between her own anecdotes about her life and the mini-novel, any reader will have their hands full in making the connections between the two and discovering things that Iris won't tell them openly.
Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Review: I couldn't get interested in the story or the characters. I stopped reading the book after 200 pages.
Rating:
Summary: Complex, absorbing and moving
Review: This is an absorbing, but complex novel that reveals the lives of the sisters Iris and Laura Chase. In spite of its complexity I did not find the novel heavygoing. On the contrary, the urge to find out what had really been going on, kept me going relentlessly. Atwood is such a masterful writer that she effortlessly interweaves the life of Iris as an old woman with the memoir of her younger years - and the main story of Laura's posthumously published novel main with the lurid SF-tale told by one protagonist to another.
The novel begins with Laura's death in 1945 and from there alternately shuttles back to her and Iris's childhood and forward to the present. Inbetween are chapters from The Blind Assassin, Laura's novel. Bit by bit things are revealed to the reader: not only about the personalities of Laura and Iris, but also what drove Laura to her death (although the answer to that one is not clear and unambiguous). We find out that Iris has always been shoved into roles assigned to her by other people: first as her sister's keeper, then as her father's intended successor in business and finally as the child-wife of her father's rival. She hardly gets the chance to develop a personality of her own. When she finally does take control of her own life, she is punished with the loss of her daughter. Iris is entirely different. Nobody is able to get any hold on her; instead she obsessively takes hold of other people (God, the poor, the mysterious Alex) and stubbornly goes her own way. Whereas passive Iris thus seems to be victim of her environment, Laura seems to be rather the victim of her own character. Lots more can be said about this novel, but let me not forget to mention that for all its complexity it is also a moving, sensitive story, maybe not entirely up to the standard of Alias Grace, but still quite good.
Rating:
Summary: A panorama of the personal
Review: This novel is the life story of its narrator, Iris Griffen, nee Chase, and her sister Laura. Iris is now an old woman living alone. Laura died young, and was feted posthumously for her iconic (and only) book, 'The Blind Assassin'. Iris tells her story both in the present and in the past, and it is interspersed with relevant newspaper clippings and extracts from Laura's book. It tells a story of two sisters who are very similar, yet so different - Iris does things because she thinks she is doing the right thing by others, Laura because it is just what she thinks is right. It is hard not to feel sorry for Iris in this story (though she herself admits that she is anything but perfect) - from a young age she was tasked to look after Laura, who was 'not quite with it'. She enters into a disastrous marriage to save the family fortune, and to the end of her life must suffer misunderstanding of her accomplishments by all those around her. By the end of the book, nothing comes as a surprise, but because Atwood has set everything in motion so well it feels like a conclusion rather than a disappointment. The most interesting thing about this book is that it makes you question how much of the problems we face in life are due to our background - race, class or gender; and how much do we bring upon ourselves, willingly or otherwise?
Rating:
Summary: Look forward to rereading it
Review: Having been a fan of Margaret Atwood for many years, I bought "The Blind Assassin" as soon as it came out. I wasn't disappointed as I found it a wonderfully juicy read, and quite different in style to her other books. It is true to a certain extent that the characters were somewhat lacking in depth, and this is the main reason it didn't get the fifth star from me. However, as the novel progresses and one watches with infuriation and pity as Iris's life unravels due to her ineffectiveness to assert herself or to take control of her destiny, one cannot help being deeply moved.
It's a book which I have lent to my closest friends only, and look forward to rereading next year.
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