Alias Grace

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Summary: "Alias Grace" is a mesmerizing tour de force.
Review: "Alias Grace" is a stunning novel and a remarkable literary achievement by Margaret Atwood. It is the fictionalized account of Grace Marks, a woman who was tried and convicted for the murder of her employer and a fellow servant in Canada during the 1800's. Atwood depicts the life of Grace Marks poignantly. Grace is born into a very poor family and tragically loses her mother at a young age during a horrible sea voyage from Ireland to Canada. After reaching Canada, Grace is hired out as a domestic in various households. Eventually, she winds up working in the Kinnear household where the murders occur. A large and fascinating portion of the book is devoted to Grace's recollections as told to Simon Jordan, a medical doctor who specializes in diseases of the mind. "Alias Grace" is populated with a large cast of Dickensian characters who are vividly described. The book is filled with delicious sardonic humor. In addition, "Alias Grace" is a social commentary, since Atwood indicts the cruel treatment of the "lower classes" in the 1800's. The detailed descriptions of Grace's endless duties as a servant while the masters of the household live a life of indolence are particularly powerful. Atwood uses clever literary devices to add texture to the novel. She quotes songs and other true life accounts of Grace's "crime," and there is even a drawing of Grace and her "accomplice". Atwood shifts points of view, so that we get the story from different angles. Atwood's style of storytelling is so engrossing that I was completely drawn into this world. Don't miss this excellent novel!

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Summary: Very, Very Good
Review: "Alias Grace" is Margaret Atwood's finest novel after "Cat's Eye." Stylistically, through its elegant parodies, it is a love letter to classic nineteenth-century fiction. If you enjoy Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, Melville, or Twain, for example, you'll love this novel. If you never heard of, much less read, any of those other authors, you may still love this novel. Yet philosophically, "Alias Grace" is thoroughly post-modern. Experience, Atwood tells us, is compartmentalized, like the mind, like quilts; truth is whatever enables us to live life.

Household servant Grace Marks was captured, tried, convicted, and jailed for her part in the 1843 murder, in what is now Ontario, of her master, bachelor Thomas Kinnear. Kinnear had been romantically involved with his housekeeper, also murdered. That much is fact, and the historical event, with its issues of class, gender, and frontier justice, has preoccupied Atwood for decades. She wrote a teleplay about it, which she now disavows, in the 1970s.

In this fictional treatment, Atwood posits a group of bourgeois reformers/mystics who seek Grace's release from prison, after many years, through the development of a more probing account of what actually happened on the day of the murders. They engage Dr. Simon Jordan, a Harvard-educated physician and early proponent of notions of the subconscious that Charcot and Freud would later develop. Obtaining her confidence, Jordan meets regularly with Grace, who chronologically tells her story. Ironically, as the tale progresses, Grace -- ostensibly the docile servant, the passive patient -- becomes increasingly percipient, controlling, and heroic, while Jordan -- ostensibly the pre-Freudian analyst -- becomes increasingly clueless, controlled by his subsconscious, and comic. At a key moment, a hypnotist (or perhaps a charlatan) intervenes, and the story takes a final, dramatic twist.

"Alias Grace" is satisfying on every level. Its plot development, poetic descriptions and dream sequences, literary references, historical and intellectual backdrop, and notions about what we know and what we live for are all very, very good.

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Summary: Crime and Punishment, Alias Punishment Without Crime?
Review: A sizable part of _Alias Grace_ is based on Susana Moodie's mid-19th century book about Grace Marks, who was convicted along with fellow servant, James McDermott, for the murders of Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper and mistress, Nancy Montgomery. Moodie met Grace Marks while the former was visiting the insane asylum and then the penitentary where Marks was later incarcerated. McDermott was hanged for his part in the murders; Marks was also condemned to die in the same manner, but her sentence was commuted to life in prison through the efforts of her attorney and of private citizens' groups who believed in her innocence. Much of Grace Marks' story is told by her, through a series of post-conviction interviews with Dr. Simon Jordan, a medical doctor who was a pioneer in the enlightened treatment of the mentally ill. Dr. Jordan is sponsored by a Reverend Verringer, who heads one of these groups.

What makes Margaret Atwood's novel so compelling is that much of what happens in _Alias Grace_ is based on true accounts of Grace Marks' life, which is seamlessly and expertly adapted by Ms. Atwood. She readily admits in her afterword "where hints and outright gaps exist in the record, I felt free to invent." Ms. Atwood is a master storyteller. Her Grace Marks is very much a three-dimensional, flesh and blood 19th century woman. The public's beliefs about her parallel many of the widely held views of females of her time. While many imagined Marks to be weak and easily led astray by a stronger and more wiley older man (Marks was only 16 at the time of the murders), others saw Marks as an evil and jealous temptress who entrapped a gullible man into the killings. Atwood also sensitively reveals the plight of many young girls of the period who suddenly become motherless and due to their changed cicumstances take positions as servants to the wealthy, or worse yet, are forced into prostitution. The alternative was pennilessness and ultimate starvation. Then there are those young women who fell prey to a "gentleman's" amorous demands, some of whom promised marriage, only to later abandon them. A truly heartbreaking episode in the book concerns Mary Whitney, a co-worker and close friend of Grace Marks, who dies as a result of a shoddily performed abortion.

By the end of the book the reader is given no definitive answer as to whether Marks was directly involved in either of the two murders. Her complexity is further revealed in the section of the book where a doctor (of the jack-of-all-trades type) puts her under hypnosis and another aspect of her personality is revealed. Grace Marks is confirmed as a woman of many sides, capable of acts of goodness, compassion--but murder? Read the very highly recommended book and then decide for yourself.

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Summary: A intelligent, compelling and easy to understand book
Review: At first glance you might feel compelled to read it because it's quite a thick book. But once you lay your eyes on the words magaret atwood has written, you are more compelled not to read it. There's an element of reality and truth to the story but at the same time it's fiction. You have a character Grace Marks who, at age of 15, is convicted of killing her master and head mistress with an accomplice but she is pardoned from being hanged. A young psychologist comes into town interested in marks' case and he tries to figure if grace's stand on her innocense is true or a basis of lies. You are along for the so called ride, trying to figure out if this girl has actually done it or not. The interesting thing is that you don't really know who is to be trusted. In many novels, you being to trust or believe the protaganist is telling the truth or innocent. But in this case, atwood makes you think and bring into reason instead of giving you the reason to believe grace. It's a very intelligent book but anyone can read it. You will not feel as if you're reading a two inch book but rather wondering how did you finished the book and not feel as if it has been an eternity. I surely recommend it. The characters feel real and there's always emotional highs and lows throughout the novel. Enjoy it.

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Summary: Tremendously done, carefully and beautifully written
Review: In Canada in the early 1800s, a young woman named Grace Marks is convicted and sentenced to life in prison for her presumed role in the murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper (and mistress) Nancy Montgomery. This is a fact. Margaret Atwood has taken the life of this women and the facts surrounding the crime, her trial, and her imprisonment, and has woven a tale that is incredibly captivating. The book is rich with quotes from the time and supposed letters written by politicians, clergy and doctors, but the voice of the narrator, Grace herself is the most seductive and most powerful of the writing. The bulk of the book is written during Grace's life imprisonment and is spurred on by the sudden visits made to her by a Dr. Simon Jordan who is a young doctor studying mental illnesses. Grace claims to have no memory of the murders and once we are inside her head, and listening to her voice, we can understand why. The reader finds him/herself completely caught up in Grace's life and her misfortunes and rightly recognizes that so many complex issues feed into the perceptions by the public of this woman, and her perceptions of the "outside" world. This was an excellent read, a startling mystery, and a generally very satisfying tale written by an author whose prose is so far beyond what is generally offered up in mystery novels.

Rating:
Summary: mesmerizing
Review: The account of Grace Marks life is a story so rich in layers of reality and imagination that one can not stop until the last page to find out the complete meaning of her ordeal. Is Grace Marks an ordinary person of dim wit, a saint, or an evil creature?
Margaret Atwood writing is so beautiful and rich in associations. The beauty of nature breaths from the book and makes one feel as if present right there in the story.
Since it took me no time finishing the book as captivating as it was, I am already worried I will finish reading all of Margaret's Atwood books in too short a time, and then be pining for more!

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Summary: What is the definition of Guilt?
Review: You know from reading the back cover that the novel is about Grace Marks, a teenage servant girl accused and convicted of the murder of her employer and a fellow servant in Canada in the year 1843. James McDermott, her partner in crime was convicted and hanged. Grace can't remember what happened the day of the murders, so we are left to wonder for almost the entire book - did she do it, or does guilt rest entirely with James McDermott?

When the story opens, Grace has already been in jail for about 10 years. There are many pages of setup containing straightforward storytelling interspersed with newspaper excerpts, poems, letters and testimony. We are introduced briefly to Grace's life in prison and become acquainted with her crime and her notoriety. It is common practice for prisoners to work as servants in the warden or prison Governor's home and part of Grace's daily routine is to do sewing and cleaning for his family. We also meet Dr. Jordon, a mental health expert attempting to break the lock on Grace's memory.

After about 100 pages, Grace begins a linear narration of her life through sessions with Doctor Jordon. She tells about how she came to Canada with her large family on an ocean voyage from Ireland and continues with her employment as a servant. We hear a great deal about sweeping, scrubbing, sewing and laundry and it becomes clear that Grace takes pride in her work. These psychotherapy sessions alternate with the book's present (10 years after the murders) and we learn that a local Reverend and a group of Grace's supporters believe in her innocence and are fighting to have her freed. We also get bits about the Governor's wife and daughters, and the Doctor himself. The respectable women and the Doctor form a nice juxtaposition to Grace's story because they illustrate the expectations, restrictions and privileges of class and gender.

This is not a murder mystery in the conventional sense. The reader may believe that Grace's innocence or guilt is the main point of the story as late in the book, we eagerly approach the hypnosis that occurs. Details about her participation in the murder are uncovered that are ambiguous, but also revealing. In the final chapters, time does move on and we learn about what happens to the Doctor, the Reverend, the Governor's daughter and of course, Grace, in a satisfying conclusion.

Margaret Atwood's technique is remarkable. The story raises questions about the nature of guilt, innocence, forgiveness and how the actions of others and the prescriptions of society affect the range of choices available to a person. There are a few passages in the story that offer glimmers of Grace's psyche and there are several gems that make the story vibrate. This story is better enjoyed with discussion.

Recommended.