The Blind Assassin
(Margaret Atwood)
Margaret Atwood is known for serious, weighty novels that
often leave an uneasy taste in the back of the reader's
mouth and usually go on to win critical awards. 'The Blind
Assassin' is no
exception, being the winner of the Booker Prize in 2000. It
is a thick novel, delivering effortlessly and without
monotony over 600 pages the story of a young woman whose
life dates from before the first world war. Atwood
successfully combines fictional prose, newspaper articles
(both tabloid and broadsheet) and a seperate storyline (in
the form of a Book within the novel which also interlinks
to fill some of the gaps in the main narrative) to
weave the tangled web of the past of the doomed heroine. We
are taken through her life, moving naturally from childhood
to adolescence to adulthood, from school to marriage to
motherhood, to grandmotherhood and beyond. Along the way
the character encounters deaths, love and sacrifice,
recounting all with the benefit of hindsight and knowing
that all she tells will eventually lead to her ultimate
unhappiness. The main plot centres around a romance which,
though doomed, is written in such a way that it remains
full of chemistry and joy as well as bitter-sweet sadness.
Another clever plot device is the fact that many of the
events included in the book in which the characters take
part are actually real historical events, such as the
maiden voyage of the huge liner the Queen Mary; Atwood uses
original articles from the time to illustrate her work,
making the narrative seem all the more authentic.
The plot includes a certain amount of mystery for the
reader, and when the heroine eventually makes herself
clear, finally spelling-out what she has previously
omitted, the reader is left with an overwhelming feeling
which can be described as a mixture of dread, panic and
melancholy, and which can only be the sign of the effect of
a successful writer. Overall is the sense that although the
book inspires sadness or uneasiness, the reader does not
feel it was a waste of time and the characters remain in
the mind long after the book is set aside.
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