Rating: 
Summary: The best book this year
Review: This is the first book by Margaret Atwood that I've read, but it won't be the last. I absolutely loved it, and I can't wait to read her other books. This so richly deserved the Booker Prize. I had high expectations of this book and it didn't disappoint me at all. Brilliantly written, not one word was out of place. I don't understand all the negative comments about this novel, it was excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: Trip to the Morgue
Review: I was very disappointed with this book. All the complicated switching back and forth resemble a fan dance -- but there is nothing behind the fans. All the characters are dead, even the ones that are still moving around. I think Laura Chase drove off the bridge out of sheer boredom -- and I don't blame her one bit!
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: 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?
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