From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood

Start date: January 1, 2022

Finish date: January 31, 2022

Discussion: Canadian Literature Reads

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 11 topics — 250 comments total

Canadian Literature Reads

CanLit - April - Moon of the Crusted Snow *Spoilers*
By Dawn , Loves a Challenge · 55 posts · 25 views

last updated Mar 16, 2024 11:53AM

CanLit - January - Alias Grace
By Dawn , Loves a Challenge · 21 posts · 24 views

last updated Feb 06, 2022 01:39PM

showing 10 of 23 topics view all »

What Members Thought

May 13, 2018 El rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hear-me-roar-and-gender, margaret-atwood, 1001-books-list, re-read-mania, 20th-centurylit-late, true-crime, big-effing-books

Oh, Margaret Atwood, I can't quit you.

I read Alias Grace in the late 1990s in college. The book was still relatively new at the time. It was unlike the other books by Atwood we had read in the class - this is historical fiction, as opposed to the speculative fiction of, say, The Handmaid's Tale. Based on a true story, Atwood takes readers to Canada for a bit of a literary murder mystery.

This is not your potboiler of a mystery. Grace Marks is a young servant woman who is accused of killing her em Oh, Margaret Atwood, I can't quit you.

I read Alias Grace in the late 1990s in college. The book was still relatively new at the time. It was unlike the other books by Atwood we had read in the class - this is historical fiction, as opposed to the speculative fiction of, say, The Handmaid's Tale. Based on a true story, Atwood takes readers to Canada for a bit of a literary murder mystery.

This is not your potboiler of a mystery. Grace Marks is a young servant woman who is accused of killing her employer and his housekeeper. The story is told through the course of her visits with Dr. Simon Jordan years later as he is studying her from the perspective of mental illness. She tells him about her family's arrival from Ireland to Canada (grueling and heartbreaking journey that it was) to what led her to become a maid in Thomas Kinnear's house to begin with. Dr. Jordan travels the labyrinth of Grace's recounted memories as he tries to determine what really happened in Mr. Kinnear's home.

I absolutely love the voice of Grace Marks. If you take the time to watch the CBC miniseries on Netflix, you will not likely be disappointed in Sarah Gadon, the lovely actress who plays Grace. She is absolutely perfect and nails Grace's voice exactly in my opinion. The miniseries also follows the course of Atwood's novel very closely and I had no complaints that I normally do that certain things were left out, embellished, or made ambiguous. Thank the baby jebus for Sarah Polley for making a wonderful adaptation of this book.

What is best to me about this book, besides the way Atwood makes me feel like I'm in 19th century Canada, is how I can read this more than once and find something new in it and still not be able to decide how much of Grace's story I believe. She has good fun talking with Dr. Jordan, and he takes it all in because he is bewitched by her (aren't we all?).

This is truly Atwood at her best, really, at least throughout most of this book. I feel the story is not as strong when told from Simon Jordan's perspective - his voice does not ring true for me upon this re-reading, but I can almost overlook that because Grace is so wonderfully portrayed. The rest of the storytelling, even, is rather masterful and I am constantly blown away by how great Atwood can be at times.

The heat of summer has come without warning. One day it was still cold spring, with gusting showers and chilly white clouds remote above the glacial blue of the lake; then suddenly the daffodils withered, the tulips burst open and turned inside out as if yawning, then dropped their petals. Cesspool vapours rise from back yards and gutters, and a mist of mosquitoes condenses around every pedestrian's head. At noon the air shimmers like the space above a heated griddle, and the lake glares, its margin stinking faintly of dead fish and frog spawn. At night Simon's lamp is besieged by moths, which flutter around him, the soft touch of their wings like the brushing of silken lips.
(p341)

This is the kind of book I like to curl up with and never leave. The ambiguity of Grace's story always has been thinking and questioning and investigating my own motives which is sort of fucked up since I've never killed anyone. But that's the artistry of this book. ...more

17 likes · Like · see review

Oct 25, 2012 Genia Lukin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-and-detective, historical, 1001-books

This is an extremely well-written book, and quite interesting besides. My main problems with it were that in a sense it was almost too well-written - it felt overwrought, and the substance often seemed to take second place to the language. It was written with so many artistic devices and tools that, in a way, I sometimes just wished the author would come out and say what she had to say.

I also felt the ending (I won't spoil it for you) was a little bit of a cop-out. It felt like a way to resolve ...more

10 likes · Like · see review

Feb 03, 2022 Petra rated it liked it

Was Grace guilty of murder? That question hangs in the air on every page of this book. She's a wonderful character with many aspects and variations. The reader is never sure whether she's telling the truth, entirely, or not.
Behind Grace's story we see how difficult times were for the poor. Servants treated as property, afraid to lose their positions, the lack of options.
Simon, too, is an interesting person. He, too, is held in the boundaries of Society, expected to marry, be wealthy & prosperou ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

May 28, 2017 Heather(Gibby) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian-author, giller-prize, bingo-2017

This is an excellent historical fiction novel about a true double homicide that happened in the 1840's in Toronto Canada. Margaret Atwood is just as skilled at crating a story set in 150 years in the past as she is in setting her stories in the future.
\Grace was a 16 year old girl serving in the Kinnear household. Although she was found guilty of the murders, there were many who did not believe she took an active part, and was manipulated into being an unwilling accomplice. No one will never kn ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 20, 2018 Elise rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, women, 1990s, historical, read-in-2018

An atypical approach to historical fiction, Alias Grace follows Grace Marks, accused murderess, as she relates her life story to the doctor Simon Jordan and his gross male gaze. But Grace isn’t just telling the story; she tells the story of how she tells the story, so the reader never has direct access to her thoughts beyond what she chooses to convey. It’s a clever way for Atwood to balance the ambiguity surrounding the events of the murders and to comment on the nature of truth and narrative.

3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 25, 2019 Pamela rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: boxall-1001-read

Based on a real-life Canadian murder case of the 1840s, this novel tells the story of Grace Marks and her crime through letters, third person narrative, and Grace's own POV as she is interviewed in the Penitentiary by Dr Simon Jordan. Dr Jordan is looking to publish some ground-breaking research on mental illness, and views Grace as a suitable subject, but he soon finds himself personally involved in her story and struggling to distinguish the truth he thought would be so easy to extract.

I have ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Mar 20, 2012 Dawn rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction, own, can-lit, prize-giller

I am a big Atwood fan. I love her style and imagination. I love how well she writes. I love that she's Canadian.

This book though...didn't really meet my expectations. I had a hard time being interested in the characters in the second half of the book. I can't pin point why, just that I found myself bored and in a hurry to get the book over with. It's a pity really, it is a great story and very well written. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Feb 04, 2022 Susan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2022, world-lit-na-canada, canada-reads, roundtable

Mixed Reviews.

There is the typical Atwood statement about abortion in the late 19th and earliest 20th century. Grace is split into a variety of personalities: child, daughter, caregiver, nurse, provider, employee, friend, then she becomes something more. Who is Grace? How does society, the law, the courts, the media, doctors, ministers, men, women, and other children see Grace? Atwood has given her many Aliases. I am not convinced she ever discovered or even explored, who she was, what she thoug ...more

Like · see review

Jan 18, 2018 Janice (JG) rated it it was amazing

In many ways, this story of Grace Marks -- based on a true life history -- is even more devastating and indicting than The Handmaid's Tale (Atwoods' more famous novel) because the damage caused, its consequences, and all its subtle implications are based in fact. Many of these facts, by the way, were true for most women in the world at the time this story takes place. For some it was worse. ...more

Like · see review

Sep 14, 2013 Lise Petrauskas rated it liked it · review of another edition

I read this several years ago and don't have a very good memory of it. Three stars? ...more

1 like · Like · see review

May 27, 2017 Nadine in California rated it it was amazing

I am all in and then some for Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction (and I'm including Hag-Seed in this category) but after DNF'ing The Blind Assassin (dull lead character despite an increasingly interesting plot), I've been leery of reading her other books. But I found the Atwood genius is alive and well in this one. ...more

Like · see review