The Blind Assassin

Rating:
Summary: A future literary classic!
Review: Love a good mystery with a knockout surprise ending? How about a bizarre, yet captivating sci-fi adventure? Or perhaps a tale of romance with a historical flavor satisfies your literary craving? No matter which of these ideas most appeals to you, you will find them all in Margaret Atwood's THE BLIND ASSASSIN, a book that truly is, as the cover proclaims, "the first great novel of the new millenium."

I was required to read Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE for an AP English course, and was so compelled by her writing style that I decided to investigate the rest of her work. I picked this book up on a whim, and was not surprised to find that it was equally as gripping as the book I had previously read. From the first sentence, Atwood draws the reader into her twisted tale of an affluent family's dark, and ultimately tragic history, surveying the lives of two sisters from the events of their childhood up to the death of one in a tragic car accident. Using three interconnected stories, she gradually reveals the complexities and dark secrets of the family, purposefully making you believe you know exactly where the story is going, when in actuality you couldn't be more wrong. A science fiction story, told alongside the book's biographical elements, parallels the Chase family's experiences in ways the reader must discover for himself. The book's stunning ending comes out of nowhere and will leave you staring at the last page in disbelief long after its conclusion.

If I can give you any advice about this book, it's this: Keep reading. No matter how irrelevant some parts may seem to the overall story, they are vital to understanding the intricacies of the plot. It is the kind of novel that most definitely requires a second reading, as many of the details can be better seen once the outcome of the story is known. Bravo to Margaret Atwood--this one is a future classic! :-)

Rating:
Summary: Worth making time for, even if you are busy.
Review: I don't have much time to read, but I could not put this one down. I gave it to my Mom for her birthday (she is the most avid reader I know). This is one of those books that makes me wonder where writers get their ideas, how they develop their characters, and how they organize the stories. I am not a sophisticated literary critic, but it is doesn't take a lot of credential to recognize that this is an amazingly creative and entertaining book.

Rating:
Summary: Infuriating
Review: I usually love Margaret Atwood's books, but this one is the exception. The lack of compassion, the lack of common sense, the lack of warmth in all the characters throughout the book becomes, frankly, infuriating. We are not mute virgins. We are strong, smart women. Educated. Independent. I am going to re-read Atwood's Surfacing and try to forget all about monstrous Iris, the blind assassin, killing off what she can't even see that she has.

Rating:
Summary: Blind, maybe---sophisticated certainly!
Review: I have enjoyed Margaret Atwood before ('loved Alias Grace) so I looked forward to this read. And it did not disappoint.

It requires some focus -- it's sophisticated, complex, and somewhat intricate, which requires concentration. It unravels slowly but develops in a fascinating way. At the end you really care about Iris, the narrator/sister of the deceased, and understand her conflcted emotional response to her sister, Laura, who dies.

Rating:
Summary: A World - Not Just a Book
Review: The novel is amazing. It's so simple to get swept up in this world Atwood creates. I love how gives us tastes of this place and its people, like she's giving out candy or something. The characters are real, almost too real. Considering the dirty dealings they get up to, it's hard to admit that we do these things. The only parts that are confusing, I found, were, first, the lack of development of the two unnamed lovers in Laura's book. They never really "fall in love," and after the first few chapters it's hard to even like the man. Also, Laura's notebooks, the strange code with dates attatched. Don't even try to figure it out, just keep reading and you learn what they signify. Also, post-it notes are almost essential, you'll be flipping back and forth so much you need reference points. May I suggest reading it twice, or reading the first half, then going back to the begining and reading the whole thing through?

Rating:
Summary: Atwood scores again
Review: I can understand why this novel has had mixed reviews. It is complex and wordy and in some senses predictable (although the final revelations are not, except perhaps in retrospect). It took me 50 or so pages to "get into" the book, but once I did I was hooked. Perhaps it seems too long to some, but I loved nearly every word. It takes time for the multiple stories to unfold. The meetings of the woman and her lover are a tad tedious and add little, but otherwise great. Atwood's writing is not the most gorgeous of contemporary greats, but it's beautiful enough and captivating. She has the ability here and in her other novels to create memorable characters with the barest of outlines.

Rating:
Summary: I just don't know...
Review: I liked this book, really, but it was on the brink of taking a fatal step from suspensful to boring. It was long, drawn out, and even tedious in parts. By the middle of the book I was wishing for more clues, something to help tie the sections together, but it just kept plodding along, season by season. However, despite my impatience, Atwood's charming observations of womanhood, which I loved so much in "A Handmaid's Tale," were just as wonderful in this book, and they helped me to understand how much her characters are like myself, and like every woman.

Rating:
Summary: Not Atwood's best
Review: Reading this book, I experienced some of the same feelings I had when I saw Spielberg's 1989 film "Always" - namely, "Why is this very talented person spending their time on such a mediocre story?" The story and structure of Blind Assassin, while interesting enough, is the stuff of easy summer reading and well within the capability of a pulp writer like Danielle Steel. In Atwood's hands, it is made overly complicated. On the one hand, the writing, characterization, and story-telling are all very well-done. Unfortunately, the plot itself cannot support the literary weight Atwood places on top of it. In the end I was left feeling dissatisfied - it was all much ado about nothing. I found the supposed plot-twists obvious, gimmicky and unconvincing.

If you are a fan of Atwood's writing, I can recommend this book as a nice way to spend a weekend with a favorite writer. Those looking for an introduction to Atwood or for an all-around satisfying read should look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Too Many Words Spoil the Book
Review: After having come to the end of the more than 500 pages of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, I am left in a mist. She writes too much. It is more than this reader wants to know about everything that is or has ever been in her head. Even as a memoir, I would find such detailed description spurious. No one can remember that amount of copious detail (and no one should fantasise that much) so it must be compiled from notebooks. This gives the writing the sense of being painstakingly artificial the more it tries for ingenuousness. Besides, what does it do for the book? It interferes with the plot, and, if there ever was a theme, it is too entangled, buried under too many unrelated words.

You can indeed write too many words. Atwood did. In the end, I found myself longing to escape the hopeless entanglements of her over-zealous bramble bush kind of a mind. I found the entire book suffocating and I am suspicious of the inordinate praise she garners as a writer. I was about three quarters finished with the volume when I reread the dust jacket notes. I wondered if the reviewer and I were reading the same piece!!!!! To be sure, there are interesting aspects of the book. There had to be or I wouldn't have finished the novel - for any price. The character of Laura is interesting . . . this grave, solemn child who believes her own heart to be the final judge of reality. Laura has no interest in accepting things just because it is the convention to do so. She is, for us, the type of conscience that throws caution to the winds because it does not recognise caution - only the search for the truth. She cuts out pages of the Bible because, she says, she does not like them. She is that rare thing - an original thinker and , as is the fate of all truly original thinkers, is not allowed to continue - she suffers and then dies. The story within the story is very promising - beginning by taking on the whole issue of mindless traditions which oblige societies to perform senseless acts, but it is itself, finally, not awfully fraught with meaning. Who or what is the Blind Assassin supposed to be and what has he to do with the larger story or, finally, with us? What gives him the right to be the eponym for the book? I cannot make any metaphor which is strong enough to hold the whole dreary 513 page opus together, and I am sorry that, in the end, neither does Atwood. I fear that her admirers who, significantly, include the judges who gave her the Booker Prize, were too dazzled by the trick of it all, pulling off the trick, that they failed to see that it really wasn't achieved so seamlessly after all.

There is far too much of a tendency today to admire because others admire and, what is worse, to admire for the same reasons others admire. This herd instinct, the direct antithesis of independent thought, skews judgement, causes great harm and waste and is, we can see from her books, one thing Atwood herself sternly disapproves of.

There is something of importance in The Blind Assassin, but it is buried under writing that is self-indulgent and peculiarly self-defeating (so, to my mind, is the currently fashionable brand of literary deconstructure that throws out meaning or relevance as a valid standard for judging writing) . The manuscript should have been cut. Cut and cut again. However, if ever you want the contents of your closet described in excruciating detail, I would refer you to the Margaret Atwood of The Blind Assassin. She wouldn't miss a thing.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: At the center of each of the three books by Atwood that I have read, there is a lie. Well, maybe lie is too strong a word. There is a recognition that someone is stretching the truth, or distorting it. In The Robber Bride and Alias Grace, the reader is never quite certain which character is messing with the facts. Margaret Atwood is a bit devilish in that respect. It's clear that the author knows full well what the truth really is, but she wants her readers to make their own determinations. In this way, her novels quite accurately reflect real life. The truth is different, depending on your viewpoint.

In The Blind Assassin, however, we finally meet a character who confesses to telling a lie. Mind you, she doesn't do it until the very end of the book. And in the meantime, Atwood delicately sets her story on the very knife-edge of the truth, so that when the lie is revealed we have that forehead slapping moment when we recognize the truth that was in front of us all the time.

I enjoyed this book very much, although I would not classify it as an easy summer read. In fact, it is the kind of novel that, ideally, should be read twice: once for plot and a second time for nuance. In particular, the relationship between the two main characters, Iris and her younger sister, Laura, needs to be carefully considered. Tensions, emotions, conflicts lie just beneath the surface of the story. Atwood's characters never reveal themselves in any straightforward way.

The story unfolds for us through Iris's memoir, through newspaper clippings, and through the pages of a novel within the novel. This is an intriguing storytelling device that I can't ever remember running across before. It adds layers of mystery and complexity to the tale. In fact, I think it must take a really devious mind to write a novel like this. I would love to hear Margaret Atwood talk about her writing some time. I'm just not sure she would be telling the truth.