Rating: 
Summary: The Blind Reviewers
Review: Despite a good friend's recommendation, I was almost dissuaded from buying this book because of all the negative reviews it was getting. After having read the book, I just want to address two of the many criticisms readers are levelling at it:1. Many readers are saying they did not care for the science fiction parts. I guess you can't make much of a counterargument against someone simply disliking something, but this is silly. These people have bad taste. You should not listen to anyone who says they don't like something without explaining why. I'm not one of those strange-looking flannel-wearing folk who camp out in the fantasy book section of the book store, but I like science fiction as much as anything else. To me, saying you don't like the science fiction parts of The Blind Assassin is as ludicrous as saying you don't like the fiction parts. Science fiction deals with the same elements that other fiction has: warmth, a new perspective, humor, complexity, passion. And you get a bonus: you get to see what remains human despite all the technology we create to camouflage our weaknesses. The science fiction parts in The Blind Assassin were no less moving than the rest of the book. In fact, they were the real highlights. The science fiction part of the novel is actually a story within a story: what makes it particularly interesting is not the story itself, but what it says about the characters who are telling it. Atwood expertly weaves the science fiction novel into the real-life memoir of the narrator, Iris. While Iris shapes her memoir around what is concealed, keeping it spare and lean, these science fiction scenes, filled with lovers and gentle teasing and sacrificial virgins, are honest and real and conceal nothing. You could touch and feel and hear and smell them. They break your heart. The only way I can understand this criticism is that these people must not understand the pulp science fiction tale for the campy, snarky, metaphor that it is. I admit to being a lazy reader, but these people are lazier. 2.The other criticism people are making is that the ending is predictable. They are just trying to sound smart by asserting that they guessed the ending from the very beginning. How many plot twists does a book have to have in order to please everyone? Hamlet, King Lear, and Middlemarch should be rewritten to please these people. If you are thinking about buying this book but hesitate because of the bad reviews, don't listen to them. They're just being picky. It's a lot easier to think of something bad to say about a book you don't understand than to admit that your initial reactions to the unfamiliar got in the way of enjoyment and understanding, and that maybe you'll need to re-read it before you can give an informed opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Characterization
Review: Now, I have read some of the other reviews, and I think that this book is getting too much flak. It is brillant, in the way it is masterfully woven together. Atwood combines the novel within a novel beautifully. And as for what the novel within is all about...it is an allegory showing that we are mute virgins and blind assassins... The story grabbed me from the very first words. Atwood's character, Iris, seemed stoic and unloving at first, but we soon realize she is more of a victim of her life than a cold woman. She starts at her sister's "mysterious" car accident in which she drove off a bridge. From there, it goes back in time and chronicles her life, with the novel within intersperced, which we increasingly understand the parallels between the two story lines. I have never read something more enjoyable. I finished this book in two days, unable to function simply because I was that enthralled. She paints an interesting world in which the characters are very real. You hate some of them, love others...and feel ambivalent towards the rest... I can't believe how much I began to care about these characters. The book is very emotional, and certainly isn't a particularly light read. It has its moments, but the bombardment of emotion is quite unsettling, but I enjoy that. The bottom line is: the novel has a good plot, wonderful characters, and an interesting arrangement. It is most definitely one of the best books I've read.
Rating:
Summary: If you're looking for soulless speed, turn to your microwave
Review: ...but if you wish to savor a lovely read, look no further. Margaret Atwood is simply a brilliant author and this is one of her best. A favorite quality in her books is to take an experience, thought or feeling and transform it into language so close to home, you feel like you've heard yourself say it. There are several passages in this book that ring true to personal experience beyond the boundaries of time or perspective. This is to say nothing of her unique ability to tell a story without sounding formulaic or trite. This novel moves from past events, including a foray into a separate fictional realm, into the present, and back again. It digresses at points to show a window on the character's past which affects how they, and we, relate to the events. This technique is not difficult to read but thoroughly engaging. Lose yourself in this narrative and enjoy the journey.
Rating: 
Summary: Tough read, but gave lots of food for thought
Review: Getting one third into the book is the hardest part, but having spent the money I pressed on. The sci-fi portions left me a little cold and I wanted to wack Iris in the head soundly. Her character is spineless allowing her father, her husband and sister-in-law to control her life until her late years. She allowed them to rob her of everything but her well kept secret lover. Even the lover was a lout, but at least this relationship was one of her own choosing. I have enjoyed all Ms. Atwood's other books much more than this, but this one has given me food for thought longer.
Rating:
Summary: How does she keep on doing this!
Review: I've never been much of a groupie before (I hate to even use that expression), but for the first time in my life, I wish that I could meet this superb author, or even write her a fan letter. Living in the states, in southern California, when I'm originally from the east coast of english speaking Canada, Margaret Atwood is like a childhood "blankie". Sound weird, probably so, but it is such a pleasure to read descriptions and experiences that I feel I've lived myself. The Blind Assasin, as do many of M.A.'s books, has a few strange scenarios, and some surprising twists in the plot, but again the emotions she allows her heroines (and non-heroines) to reveal is gripping and believable. Please, please Ms Atwood, continue...
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful prose, not much else
Review: After reading about 300 pages the "complicated" plot twists had all been straightened out, and the only reason to drudge through the remainder of the book was the hope of coming across more of Atwood's occasionally poignant passages. The novel does cover a lot of ground, just not very well. Class tension, blah. The depravity beneath the genteel surface, blah. This is not a novel with incisive observations about life. Which could be excused if the story and characters were engaging. Laura was the only interesting character, but unfortunately, due to the method of narration was only seen sparingly in the second half. Could have been four stars with 200 less pages and tauter descriptive passages. The story itself would have still been trite, but at least it wouldn't have taken so long to get through. There IS beautiful writing here, it's just stuck in a dull story with mostly dull characters.
Rating: 
Summary: The Chase family history is great, but...
Review: I picked up this book because I wanted to read more of Atwood's razor-sharp family history narrated by a woman. I enjoyed "The Robber Bride" very much, and "Cat's Eye" was also good, although the end disappointed me a bit. I didn't care because I don't read a book because of its ending anyway. The Blind Assassin features the story of the Chase family (who is not quite a dynasty), and those bits were just great. I can see why Atwood got the Booker Prize for this one here. With only a few poignant sentences, she can evoke characters, situations, and, most of all, atmosphere with great detail and density. I disagree with Iris Chase when she apologizes for not having drawn Richard Geffen (another blind assassin in his own way) in more detail. I found him being there, and I despised him from the beginning. An even stronger case in point is Winifred: she does appear only very rarely in the text, but I was surprised at how much I came to hate her. Each and every character is drawn strongly in the text. That's not to say that the heroines are intelligent, but damsels in distress and prone to twists of faith all the time. Far from it - sometimes I was exhausted with Laura's naïve world views or Iris' passivity. Even with their flaws, they were wonderfully rounded characters, and interesting to read about, for instance Laura's problems with God or Iris' sarcasm as an old woman. There are, however, those excerpts of a novel-in-the-novel called "The Blind Assassin," wherein a man tells a fantasy story to a woman (both will be identified at some point in the text). What were those for? He is a Communist, and they are having an affair, okay, so far I understood it; but what else is it for except to let the man rant about her being rich and maybe unfaithful with someone other than him? Such stuff is dangerously close to mindless man-bashing, and Atwood is way above such cheap tricks. Some of the passages are screamingly funny because they are your stereotypical fantasy stuff (check out "Peach Women of Aa'A), but otherwise I was confused. Maybe I didn't get the point. There is a lot of stuff in the text that you are likely to overread - allusions to texts by Dante, the Book of Daniel, and so on, besides the obvious references to Coleridge and others. What is more, I don't know enough about Canadian history to get all the references in the newspaper clippings, but that did not keep me from enjoying a good read. In the case of the Assassin and the mute Virgin and their escape to the wolves, I am afraid I've got the point, and I think those parts do not live up to the rest of Atwood's writing. Consequently, the book falls apart. Nevertheless, quite a great read, because the moment when you find out who did what to whom and why, that is the moment that makes reading this book so worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: best book in a long time
Review: I usually do not give five stars, but this book is honestly one of the best books i have read in a long time. This was my first Atwood book, and I will be reading more. For anyone that wants to read a book that's unique, intriging, this one is for you.
Rating:
Summary: Not a review...
Review: One of the best books I have read, and one of the very few I plan to read a second time. I could never summarize this book in 1,000 words. Margaret Atwood just keeps getting better!
Rating:
Summary: Deeply Affecting,, Sumptuously Written--Again
Review: Once again, Atwood has demonstrated the richness of her craft. This insightful, layered work shows Atwood's thorough capability. Although the jacked descriptions present a frame story combining past fiction with memoir, the structure of Blind Assasin is much more complicated. Indeed, the interplay between past, present, memoir and fiction is meta-structural, as even the titles within the book are ambiguous and the divisions shift and dissolve without warning. Atwood gives us a lot to love. She has again brought forward compelling protagonists, female, as usual. She has also conjured up antagonists of both sexes, typically shallow but not unrealistically so, given the novel's voice. Atwood also sweeps through the twentieth century, concentrating on 1915, or so, through the end of World War II, rushing to the late 1990s where she deftly encapsulates the sensisiblities of an octogenarian amid donut shops, malls, cities, towns and the weather channel. Her prose deserves attention. Atwood writes homilies, proverbs, observations and literary allusions which make this slow reading. But the time is well worth it, as the author's insight is razor sharp and her use of language nothing short of beautiful. Don't stop at just one Atwood. Read Cat's Eye and the Robber Bride. Atwood's unflinching view of her characters and the dynamics between and among women is well worth it.
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