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The blind assassin

by Atwood, Margaret, 1939-

Format: Print Book 2001
Availability: Available at 6 Libraries 6 of 8 copies

Available (6)
Location Collection Call #
Braddock Carnegie Library Fiction F ATW
Location  Braddock Carnegie Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  F ATW
 
 
Millvale Community Library Adult Fiction FIC ATW
Location  Millvale Community Library
 
Collection  Adult Fiction
 
Call Number  FIC ATW
 
 
Monroeville Public Library Fiction ATWOOD MARGARET
Location  Monroeville Public Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  ATWOOD MARGARET
 
 
Mt. Lebanon Public Library Fiction ATWOOD Maragret
Location  Mt. Lebanon Public Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  ATWOOD Maragret
 
 
Scott Township Library Fiction FIC ATWOOD
Location  Scott Township Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  FIC ATWOOD
 
 
South Fayette Township Library Fiction FIC ATW
Location  South Fayette Township Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  FIC ATW
 
 
 
Unavailable (2)
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Collection  First Floor - Fiction Stacks
 
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Collection  First Floor - Display
 
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Collection  First Floor - Fiction Stacks
 
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CLP - Main Library First Floor - Fiction Stacks IN PROCESSING
Location  CLP - Main Library
 
Collection  First Floor - Fiction Stacks
 
Status  IN PROCESSING
 
 

Summary
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE

In The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood weaves together strands of gothic suspense, romance, and science fiction into one utterly spellbinding narrative. The novel begins with the mysterious death--a possible suicide--of a young woman named Laura Chase in 1945. Decades later, Laura's sister Iris recounts her memories of their childhood, and of the dramatic deaths that have punctuated their wealthy, eccentric family's history. Intertwined with Iris's account are chapters from the scandalous novel that made Laura famous, in which two illicit lovers amuse each other by spinning a tale of a blind killer on a distant planet. These richly layered stories-within-stories gradually illuminate the secrets that have long haunted the Chase family, coming together in a brilliant and astonishing final twist.
Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "Stories spin within stories in this spellbinding novel of avarice, love, and revenge. It begins in Toronto in 1945 when Laura Chase, 25 years old, drives a car off a bridge. Iris Chase Griffen, her older sister and wife of a wealthy and conniving businessman, seems more concerned with the proper attire for her trip to the reporter-ringed morgue than with her sister's fate, but readers should never underestimate an Atwood heroine's capacity for self-discipline and subterfuge. Iris has had to perfect the art of self-abnegation ever since her mother's death, when her father, a compassionate manufacturer, asked her to look after Laura. Sheltered and naive, the girls were ripe pickings for Richard, to whom their father handed over his business and family property, including 18-year-old Iris, and Alex Thomas, a labor activist implicated in arson and murder, who may or may not be Laura's lover. Atwood, whose wit, metaphorical descriptions, and elegant characterizations are breathtaking in their beauty and resonance, weaves an intriguing trifurcate narrative. Newspaper articles document Canada's Red scare, the political and industrial jockeying for war profits, and high-society goings-on. Iris' wry memoir, which she is writing in the present at the end of her difficult life, reveals at long last the wrenching truth about herself and Laura amid hilariously acerbic commentary on the inanities of contemporary life. And then there are the most mysterious sections, chapters from Laura's posthumously published novel, The Blind Assassin, an erotic and poignant story of illicit love between a socialite and a radical fugitive, who charms his lover with fantastic stories about the planet Zycron, where a blind assassin falls in love with a mute sacrificial virgin. Aptly enough, figurative forms of blindness and silence are both bane and antidote in the thwarted lives Atwood conjures so masterfully. --Donna Seaman"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "Family secrets, sibling rivalry, political chicanery and social unrest, promises and betrayals, "loss and regret and memory and yearning" are the themes of Atwood's brilliant new novel, whose subtitle might read: The Fall of the House of Chase. Justly praised for her ability to suggest the complexity of individual lives against the backdrop of Canadian history, Atwood here plays out a spellbinding family saga intimately affected by WWI, the Depression and Communist witch-hunts, but the final tragedy is equally the result of human frailty, greed and passion. Octogenarian narrator Iris Chase Griffen is moribund from a heart ailment as she reflects on the events following the suicide in 1945 of her fey, unworldly 25-year-old sister, Laura, and of the posthumous publication of Laura's novel, called "The Blind Assassin." Iris's voiceDacerbic, irreverent, witty and cynicalDis mesmerizingly immediate. When her narration gives way to conversations between two people collaborating on a science fiction novel, we assume that we are reading the genesis of Laura's tale. The voices are those of an unidentified young woman from a wealthy family and her lover, a hack writer and socialist agitator on the run from the law; the lurid fantasy they concoct between bouts of lovemaking constitutes a novel-within-a-novel. Issues of sexual obsession, political tyranny, social justice and class disparity are addressed within the potboiler SF, which features gruesome sacrifices, mutilated body parts and corrupt, barbaric leaders. Despite subtle clues, the reader is more than halfway through Atwood's tour de force before it becomes clear that things are not what they seem. Meanwhile, flashbacks illuminate the Chase family history. In addition to being psychically burdened at age nine by her mother's deathbed adjuration to take care of her younger sibling, nave Iris at age 18 is literally sold into marriage to a ruthless 35-year-old industrialist by her father, a woolly-minded idealist who thinks more about saving the family name and protecting the workers in his button factories than his daughter's happiness. Atwood's pungent social commentary rings chords on the ways women are used by men, and how the power that wealth confers can be used as a deadly weapon. Her microscopic observation transforms details into arresting metaphors, often infused with wry, pithy humor. As she adroitly juggles three plot lines, Atwood's inventiveness achieves a tensile energy. The alternating stories never slacken the pace; on the contrary, one reads each segment breathlessly, eager to get back to the other. In sheer storytelling bravado, Atwood here surpasses even The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace. BOMC main selection; author tour. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Additional Information
Subjects Sisters -- Death -- Fiction.
Fiction -- Authorship -- Fiction.
Women novelists -- Fiction.
Older women -- Fiction.
Widows -- Fiction.
Publisher New York :Anchor Books,2001
Edition 1st Anchor Books ed.
Language English
Description 521 pages ; 20 cm
ISBN 9780385720953 (pbk.)
0385720955 (pbk.)
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