Leah D. (LeahinTexas) reviewed on + 26 more book reviews
"Grand storytelling on a grand scale....Sheerly enjoyable." --The Washington Post Book World
"Absorbing....Expertly rendered....Virtuosic storytelling." --The New York Times
From the back cover:
The Booker Prize-winning selection from the incomparable Margaret Atwood--a novel that combines elements of gothic drama, romantic suspense, and science fiction fantasy in a spellbinding narrative.
The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris Chase Griffen, sole surviving descendant of a once rich and influential Ontario family, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story improvised by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.
What makes this novel Margaret Atwood's strongest and most profoundly entertaining is the way in which the three wonderfully rich stories weave together, gradually revealing through their interplay the secrets surrounding the entire Chase family--and most particularly the fascinating and tangled lives of the two sisters. The Blind Assassin is a brillant and enthralling book by a writer at the top of her form.
"Absorbing....Expertly rendered....Virtuosic storytelling." --The New York Times
From the back cover:
The Booker Prize-winning selection from the incomparable Margaret Atwood--a novel that combines elements of gothic drama, romantic suspense, and science fiction fantasy in a spellbinding narrative.
The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris Chase Griffen, sole surviving descendant of a once rich and influential Ontario family, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story improvised by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.
What makes this novel Margaret Atwood's strongest and most profoundly entertaining is the way in which the three wonderfully rich stories weave together, gradually revealing through their interplay the secrets surrounding the entire Chase family--and most particularly the fascinating and tangled lives of the two sisters. The Blind Assassin is a brillant and enthralling book by a writer at the top of her form.
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