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.
Rating: 
Summary: Not among Atwood's best work
Review: After magnificent "Alias Grace" that several of my friends got as a present from me,I searched for something new from Atwood and was told in a bookshop that writters need some time before they come up with another masterpiece - my excitement with her new novel somehow faded with "The Blind Assasin".Atwood have a beautiful and recognisible writting style that somehow got lost in the mix of several stories together - strangely enough,her writting comes alive when she is portraiting old and fading Iris Chase who starts as passive and not specialy interesting character,but ends as sweet eccentric and lonely lady whose witt has not diminished with years.Perhaps the choice of a main character is a problem here,because Atwood tells a story from a perspective of old and lonely woman and the details of getting old is not something that most people are ready to face willingly.Also Iris Chase spend almost a whole life as a passive character,lead by others and at the end of the book in a just a few lines we learn that she eventualy later turned to be quitte wild,which clashes with previously built perception of her personality.Atwood's choice of main character could be perhaps considered brave but it doesnt neccesary works for a interesting novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Iris Griffin-Chase
Review: Margaret Atwood's most recent work, The Blind Assassin, is a masterful piece of prose. The book attempts a feat of immense proportions. Iris Griffin-Chase, the narrator, is a woman in her mid-eighties. She is in the process of writing her memoirs, and in the process sharing them with us. Not only does she tell of her life, however, but she intersperses sections of a novel written by her sister, Laura Chase, who died tragically at a young age under mysterious circumstances. The ending is a surprise - suspenseful, but well supported by all three of the individual tales. The book gives a sense of what life occurences develop to make a person who they are, and also how individuals are shaped by the workings of society. Overall, the book is both insightful and entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: A Lukewarm Bath
Review: That Margaret Atwood writes exquisitely stands without debate. Dipping into an Atwood book is like luxuriating in a warm bath.
Even so, if not for her literary mastery and reputation, I might not have read past the first 50 pages of "The Blind Assassin." So it's not her ability to construct crystalline sentences and scintillating scenes that tested my ability to persevere.
It appears Atwood (or someone in her constellation of early readers, agents and editors) knew she was on precarious grounds. Specifically, the plot lacks an element called BDQ -Big Dramatic Question - the tension, the hook, the dilemma that compels us to read, to turn the page, searching for a clue, for relief, for insight. The author used an old gimmick of transposing the end of the story to the beginning to create an artificial BDQ.
"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge."
One wonders how many readers would have stuck with 600-plus pages without the tease as opener? I found, also, that the warm bath was diluted. On page six hundred-something Atwood writes, "A fist is more than the sum of its fingers." I question whether the whole of the book is greater than the sum of the parts. "The Blind Assassin" is a book of many parts or sub-books. We've got Iris the narrator as an old woman, the newspaper clippings, the science fiction story with Zycronians, the episodes featuring the lovers' trysts, and the core story of Iris' and Laura's lives together. Whittle down or delete two or three non-core stories and what remains? Perhaps a tighter story with dramatic tension.
Although the bath water grew cold, I'm still an Atwood fan and will continue to read her books. P.S.
Who are we to suppose wrote the last segment called "The Threshold"?
Sincerely,
Beth Fowler
Rating: 
Summary: UGH!
Review: Just could NOT get into this book. The strange story line with the science fiction was irritating, and the book was SLOW! I kept hoping it would get better, but it didn't. On the flip side, I would highly recommend another of her books, The Robber Bride...MUCH BETTER!
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Novel!
Review: Margaret Atwood has written a brilliant multi-layered story.
Two days after the end of WWII, young Laura Chase drives her car off a bridge. Her death is ruled accidental, though suspicions of suicide are bandied about. The narrator of this story is Laura's sister, Iris, now in her 80s.
After Laura's death a manuscript was found among her things. This novel was published, and made Laura Chase a cult heroine. This novel-within-a-novel tells the story of two anonymous lovers, she of high social standing, he of working class origin. He is on the run from the Red Squads, Communist hunters of the time. In their assignations, he tells her a continuing story, a pulp magazine tale of the planet Zycron, with its virgin sacrifices, undead women who prey upon travellers, and slave children who are put to work weaving beautiful carpets until their eyes give out. When the children become blind they are trained as assassins who contract their services to the highest bidders.
Iris, the narrator, was given into marriage at age 17, to a man she despised, in order to cement an alliance which would save her father's button factory. The factory was failing, a victim of the Depression of the 1930s.
The novel shifts back and forth in time, and covers the years between the first World War and the present. It is rich in characterization, and Atwood's writing and use of the idioms of the period are impeccable. When Reenie, the housekeeper, talked, I could hear my mother speaking. Atwood's love and mastery of the language is apparent on every page.
Iris is not a perfect person, but to give her credit, she realizes that she is a bit of a snob, and that most times she opted for an easy life over a true one. When she was young her father tried to teach her his business, but she chose not to make the effort, and allowed herself to be pushed into a loveless marriage.
Her sister, Laura, on the other hand had a social conscience, and fell in love as a teenager with a social activist who was on the run--obviously the basis for the character in her book.
I loved this book, and many times stopped short after reading a sentence and said to myself, "Yes! That's exactly right! I wish I had written those words!". The only criticism I have is that the story lags a bit in the last 100 pages. The final twist of the novel is not terribly hard to predict, but satisfying all the same.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected.
Review: From start to finish, the Blind Assassin keeps you guessing. Through out the novel, Atwood drops hints as to who the mysterious lovers are in the embedded novel of the same name, but you can't really be sure who they are until the very end. However the path to get there is tedious, and although I found the conclusion rather satisfying, the bulk of the novel in between was quite bland and uninteresting.
At first the deviations into science fiction and suspense via the lover's after the deed story telling provides some distraction from Iris' long and boring life, but even this fabricated story becomes too repetitive. Laura Chase is the only character in the novel that was of any interest, her sister Iris and the rest of the cast were cookie-cutter characters with hardly any depth. It was infuriating to passively watch Iris get sold off to her husband, it seems as if she spends her entire life in the passenger seat of a car, she is never driving, and she hardly makes any movement to control the direction she's going in. She rarely does anything for herself- the only major thing she ever does is revealed at the end of the novel. I won't give it away, but then again it's not worth reading 500 pages to discover.
As summer reading, I found it difficult to turn the pages, the plot barely exists and the two page chapters barely sink their teeth into you before you are force fed a fabricated newspaper article that usually has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the book. And then you have to read about Iris going to the restroom in a donut shop.
Rating:
Summary: Easy reading, gripping finish
Review: This book was such a surprise. I had not overly enjoyed "Alias Grace" but wanted to read something else by the same writer. Dissimiliarly to the previously mentioned novel, I slipped easily in amongst the pages within minutes, and before I knew where I was, over a third of it had been devoured, and I was hooked. The characters are built with so much empathy. The main character is reminising, over a few weeks, and telling the story of her childhood and youth. She is presented as a rather bitter and ungrateful old woman. However as the history unfolds, the transformation from knaive, sensitive, parochial young girl becomes acceptable and almost inevitable.
This story was extremely easy reading, gripping and packs a punch as the denouement unfolds. I would thoroughly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointing read
Review: Review after reader review gives "The Blind Assassin" four or five stars, praising the fact that it's a slow read, ponderous, convoluted, confusing... More than one reader confesses to having to keep referring back to previous chapters to make sense of the narrative. This is proof of good writing? I'll admit that the writing itself is often beautiful and powerful, but it's all in the service of a long, drawn-out novel with a surprise twist everyone but myself seems to have figured out. I knew there was "something" coming, but when it did (or seemed to) I had to read the same pages over and over to try and make sense of it. The denouement seemed awfully elliptical or cryptic or...maybe just not clearly written. Or would that have been banal? I didn't enjoy the novel-within-the-novel. The most surprising thing in the whole book was Atwood's narrator's admission, toward the end, that one of the characters she's written of came off as a cardboard cutout, not three-dimensional! If only the rest of the book had been as honest. By the time I finished, I was aware of the same feeling I had after seeing "American Beauty": that the style of the piece was more compelling than the content; that the gloss of "art" couldn't, ulimately, keep me from thinking "So what?"
Rating:
Summary: Lizards and Lambs
Review: Great book on many dimensions, but not enough has been said about its political and feminist messages. The time period between the 2 world worlds with communism emerging everywhere is a fascinating backdrop for ill-fated lovers. While lizard-men capitalists prey on the helpless mute virgins, the abused secretly seek solace with the persecuted working-class carpet (or button) makers. One cannot help but side with the commies. What's Atwood's message here? Why oh why can't these women rise above their predicaments and take action? Why can't women escape! Iris Chase has the opportunity to learn her father's button business but has no interest. The only paying jobs Laura Chase can think of are carnival booths and dog walking. What a tragedy. Does one martyr oneself for the cause like Laura or succumb in order to survive like Iris? Are they the only options?
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