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Amazon.co.uk Review
"It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward," writes Margaret Atwood, towards the end of her impressive and complex new novel, The Blind Assassin. It's a melancholic account of why writers write--and readers read--and one that frames the different lives told through this book. The Blind Assassin is (at least) two novels. At the end of her life, Iris Griffen takes up her pen to record the secret history of her family, the romantic melodrama of its decline and fall between the two World Wars. Conjuring a world of prosperity and misery, marriage and loneliness, the central enigma of Iris's tale is the death of her sister, Laura Chase, who "drove a car off a bridge" at the end of the Second World War. Suicide or accident? The story gradually unfolds, interspersed with sketches of Iris's present-day life--confined by age and ill-health--and a second novel, The Blind Assassin by Laura Chase. Allowing a glimpse into a clandestine love affair between a privileged young woman and a radical "agitator" on the run, this version of The Blind Assassin is an overt act of seduction: the exchange of sex and story about an imaginary world of Sakiel-Norn (a play with the potential, and convention, of fantasy and sci-fi).

With the intelligence, subtlety and remarkable characterisation associated with Atwood's writing (from her first novel, The Edible Woman through to the best-selling Alias Grace), these two stories play with one another--sustaining an uncertainty about who has done what to who and why to the very end of this compelling book. --Vicky Lebeau --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Sunday Times
'Atwood has never written with more flair and versatility than in this multidimensional novel. A brilliant accomplishment'

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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

Margaret Atwood at her best, 4 Dec 2001

By	R. Simpson (South Kirkby, Yorks, UK) - See all my reviews

It's a relief to find the Booker Award is not just some kind of retrospective justice for the failure to reward The Handmaid's Tale - and an even greater relief to find that the multiple narrative format of the novel is neither confusing (after the first dozen pages) nor pretentious. The extracts from newspapers and magazines which chart the public life of the Chases and Griffens provide a grounding in fact as well as a wickedly amusing satire on snobbery and provincialism. 'The Blind Assassin' itself, the novel that created Laura Chase's posthumous reputation, operates on twin levels of realism and fantasy and equally the main narrative in the person of her sister Iris unites past and present (1999). Atwood manages throughout to maintain a subtle and convincing mix of sympathy for, and detachment from, her characters, allowing irony to flourish alongside involvement. The reader is even flattered by the creation of mysteries which he/she is lured into solving before they are officially unveiled: 'But you must have known that for some time', Atwood writes disarmingly after uncovering the central deception. Of course we did: aren't we clever? Not quite as clever as Ms Atwood, though.

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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

A dazzling,haunting novel of hidden love and family secrets., 7 Oct 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Blind Assassin (Hardcover)

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood is a difficult book to catergorize. It works on a dizzying number of levels: A historical novel, depicting an industrial and social milieu in early twentieth century Canada; a complex and shadowy love story; as a study of the symbolism of science fiction, or as a story of women and men and the secrets that bind them. It is the story of two sisters, Iris and Laura, who grow up in provincial Canada, daughters of a wealthy man who runs a button-making factory. The novel opens with a description of Laura's apparent suicide after the Second World War, and then Iris takes over as narrator, trying to understand and unravel the threads of Laura's life and her own. The Blind Assassin is the name of the novel that Laura leaves behind. Published posthumously, it becomes a controversial cult classic in the manner of Plath's writings, lauded as a proto-feminist classic. Iris is the reluctant keeper of her sister's troublesome flame. Woven around this intriguing structure is a dazzling array of characters: anarchists, bitter society women, strikers, husbands, housekeepers and lovers.

Atwood has always had an erudite, sexy and witty way with language and this new novel is no exception. The Blind Assassin, the novel within the novel, consists of an un-named man relating weird and distrurbing science fiction to an equally anonymous upper class woman. Atwood lets rip with her rich and persuasive use of language, conjuring up cities of strange creatures, sacrifical virgins, blind assassins, women who roam the mountains, devouring men, mythologies and exotic religions. The erotic relationship between the two nameless protaganists is consumated in a series of seedy hotel and rooms, furtive and forbidden. Paranoia and fear of discovery follow them everywhere. It seems a strange choice of themes and styles that Atwood has chosen to combine, but the unsettling ideas that bubble through both sides of the story are haunting and stay with you long after putting the book down. You see things coming and then they vanish and you have to re-read passages and re-think your reactions. It shimmers in front of you, glinting off the page. Ultimately it is a deeply moving novel, whose charaters come vividly to life. I found myself crying softly as I finished it, touched by the beauty and pain in the lives of the characters and also by my own yearning for something I can't quite explain. But if you read this extraordinary novel you will perhaps understand what I mean.

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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

Genius, 28 Jul 2001

By A Customer

I always felt that Margaret Atwood would never be able to beat 'Alias Grace' for sheer brilliance and inventiveness but that is exactly what she has done with this novel. 'The Blind Assassin' is a difficult book to read in the early stages but nevertheless compelling. We are thrown between past and present as carelessly as the protagonist, and fluctuate between feelings of sympathy and irritation throughout. I mentioned to a friend whilst I was a good way into the novel that it was great but not as good as 'Alias Grace' and that was how I felt until the last 50 pages - in those pages I witnessed the greatest ending in a book ever and one that had me weeping. Not only did the end of the book move me but I was also upset that I could not continue to read it. They say that the sign of a good book is that you don't want it to end and for possibly only the third time in my life I could so empathise with that cliche. This book has to be read of that there is no doubt!

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