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.
Rating: 
Summary: Story to the 3rd Power
Review: This book might have been aply named "Subsumption" because of its form: it is layered story. Beginning at the bottom: imagined early civilizations from another planet appear with the expected conniving, slaughter, sacrifices of young boys and girls, only to find themselves joining with barbarian forces to defend against invaders from another planet. Who tells this story? A young man who sympathizes with the communists in turbulent times, the male lover of a couple who meet secretly one day here, the next day there, the third day somewhere else, and on it goes. But pull back further (it requires no effort) and you see that it is one of two sisters who commands the entire story and its flow, and it is the relationship of these sisters from life to death during the Depression years and through WW II that this Atwood novel is truly about. It is about them and basically three men who were influential in their lives: their father, the on-the-run red sympathizer, and a wealthy Canadian industrialist who was too quick with approval for the Germans. "The Blind Assassin" is not only the title of the book for sale; it is likewise the title of the novel within, but together they invite speculation as to the symbolic meaning: who or what is the real blind assassin? The layers must come together and be artfully explained, and so they are, wonderfully so. Nevertheless, when the author of the sci-fi stuff asks himself why he writes such ["garbage,"] with some relevance this reader wondered, not so much why it was there at all, but questioned the reason for so much of it. It was tedious. So, too, were the trysts.
Rating:
Summary: 2 Plots Featuring Blind Assassins, A Tale About 2 Authors
Review: This is initially quite a confusing book to start and does require some effort on the reader's part to persist. The chapters which begin with a realistic narrative about two sisters are frequently interrupted by interspersed chapters relating a bizarre science fiction tale. Flashbacks and foreshadowing add to the confusion. Persistence becomes rewarding when a third narrative links the two seemingly unrelated plots in a clever and unexpected fashion. The reader's interest and the novel's pace pick up. There are several more surprising plot twists and the truth is eventually, but only gradually, revealed. The author's skill at interweaving these plots, her keen insights and observations, and her polished literary style and masterful use of language, which at times flows almost poetically , all add to the effect of the whole- which is truly the sum of its parts .The characters are interesting and well developed even if they are flawed and not very likable. This novel is more intricate, more difficult and longer reading material, than many of Margaret Atwood's other novels such as Robber Bride or Cat's Eye,. Try those for easier reading and much faster moving storylines. This is, however, a very unusual and a very creative work, well worth the reader's time and effort. The divison into small chapters helps and it actually makes this book a good choice for bedtime reading. I agree with other reviewers that there are indeed analogies between the two plots involving the sci fi mute sacrificial maiden rescued by a blind assassin and the sister forced to marry as an arranged business deal. I would add that there are also really two characters which fit the title of "blind assassin,"- one real and one figurative .
Rating:
Summary: The Blind Assassin
Review: When I read The Blind Assassin, I had never before read any of Margaret Atwood's novels. Consequently, I was not sure what to expect. However, Atwood's intricate style and carefully planned plot soon stunned me. Her masterful intertwining of the past, the present, and the novel within the novel was flawless, as was her character development. Rarely has a story touched me to the extent that this one has.
Rating:
Summary: A Tale of Two Sisters
Review: "The Blind Assassin" is the story of the young, beautiful, and overly-protected Chase sisters, Iris and Laura, and how they grew up and became young women in Canada in the years leading up to the second world war. In the pages of her old woman's diary at the beginning of the new century, the surviving Chase sister, Iris, tells of the girls' childhood and early womanhood and about how they met the dashing young man who would prove both the sisters' muse and litmus. The novel intersperses chapters from Iris's memoir and chapters from a cult science fiction novel called The Blind Assassin, presumably written by Laura Chase, and published posthumously in 1945 after she drove her car off a bridge. The novel inside the novel tells of a secret love affair between a nameless man and woman, and about the science fiction story that they weave together span the spaces between their assignations. The illicit relationship is not a pretty one (she's well-to-do, he's not, and is not always nice disparity), but it has the sense of immediacy about it, that like life, or creativity, strikes you as both necessary and real. This is the first novel I've read by Margaret Atwood, so I can't compare it to any of her other work. What I can do is compare it to the rest of books I've ever read, and to the criteria for discerning good writing that I've developed over that period of time, and say that The Blind Assassin is an excellent, well-written, captivating novel. If you're looking for something rich and thick to sink your summer reading teeth into, I recommend this one highly.
Rating: 
Summary: jumping around too much for this male reader.....
Review: Definately only a "chick book", at the very best. This Atwood effort jumps from one era to another to another, from reality to sci-fi, from back to front, from present to future..from un-named aliens to a 6 yr old girl to a teen ager to a dowager and then back again....with 65 year old news clips thrown in about "society events" in Canada every 15 pages or so that made no sense....very ragged at best...surely don't know what was on her mind by writing in this style...she kept losing me from chapter to chapter...this book is a bore, and took me a month to read....ugh!
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: I picked up this book because of it's title. "The Blind Assassin" has a romantic ring to it. When I finished the book, I was only 14 and yet I could relate to everything Iris had just said. My favorite part of the book were the stories of the blind assassin. I felt these were reflections of reality and all that was going on around Iris. I also liked how the story moved around different time periods, so that the entire story was revealed. This book moved me in a way that when I finished I wanted more to read.The ending is kind of obvious, but none the less a wonderful book worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, But Not Atwood's Best
Review: I love Margaret Atwood (except for the occasional clunker she's come out with - a/k/a "Life Before Man", "Surfacing" and "Bodily Harm") and was very much looking forward to her latest. And, up until the last chapter or so, she did not disappoint. I was mesmerized (I even willingly read the story-within-a-story, and I loathe science fiction tales of any type) Unfortunately, though, it seems as though Atwood was writing on a deadline, or perhaps had run out of ideas. Certainly, toward the end, the story became a bit muddled and, surprisingly, left many plot holes:... Additionally, the language, which up to the book's climax, had been of sterling Atwood quality ("... can never stop howling") somehow becomes short and stilted. "We were lovers, you see, in secret..." When I got to that line, I had a very difficult time equating it with any other dialogue in the book. It was too blunt, too sharp and failed to blend well with the rest of the writing (I thought of several other ways in which the author could have played that scene... definitely in a much gentler manner more in keeping with her prose) And finally, the narrator's obsession with death and "being a skull", etc. was just a bit too much after a while. Yes, we know she has health problems, we know she's elderly... but does the reader have to be beaten over the head with such blatant morbidity? All in all, I felt a great deal of what was otherwise a wonderful story fell through the cracks and that much space was wasted on Alex's sci-fi tale (yes, I saw the correlations between the characters and the story; however, I felt that the Xenon story could easily have been cut by two-thirds and still have made a point). In fact, it seemed as though the story-within-a-story was given precedence, and the rest just kind of fell in chunks around it. Overall, I'm glad I read this book and certainly don't begrudge the bookstore its sticker price. However, when compared to such greats as "Lady Oracle", "Cat's Eye" and "The Robber Bride", this was a definite disappointment. I have come to expect a great deal from a Margaret Atwood tale, and this failed to live up to her reputation.
Rating:
Summary: I am new at this
Review: Hearing books is new to me. This is my second experience and I find this rendering very good. The book itself is worh a read, but the narrator seems to make it a lot more fun.
Rating:
Summary: Try 3 other novels
Review: A story within a story within a story. The novelist writting about a woman writting about a novelist (her sister) and we get the sister's novel to boot and guess what? _That_ novel is about an author. My, my.
The idea is hardly new, but Atwood brings it off very well. The problem is that none of the stories going simultaneously in this lengthly novel are all that interesting. It's just a tad preachy and I find Margaret's stretching to put at least one pithy, quotable phrase on each page a bit tiresome. Though she has a humorus streak throughout this. Half way through you know what's coming, no fault in and of itself, but getting to the end is not rewarding. I'll wait for the film. THAT could be something!
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