From the Bookshelf of On Paths Unknown…

The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood

Start date: June 15, 2015

Discussion: ATWOOD-BLIND ASSASSIN

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 4 topics — 348 comments total

ATWOOD-BLIND ASSASSIN

Blind Assassin thread 4: Part XI - End & Large SPOILERS
By Traveller · 122 posts · 33 views

last updated Nov 06, 2015 03:11PM

Blind Assassin thread 3: Parts VI - X
By Traveller · 86 posts · 40 views

last updated Aug 07, 2015 01:42AM

showing 4 of 4 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Apr 23, 2015 Cecily rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fict-20th-cent, usa-and-canada, favourites, scifi-future-speculative-fict, crime-detective-mystery, unreliable-narrators, miscellaneous-fiction

“All stories are about wolves… Anything else is sentimental drivel.”

Atwood doesn’t write sentimental drivel (and I don’t read it), and there are several wolves in this stunning book. This is my tenth Atwood, and it’s even better than any of the others I’ve enjoyed. The scope and variety of her work is impressive, but here, she accomplishes that within the covers of a single book: it should be shelved as historical fiction, memoir, espionage/thriller, and sci-fi.

It grabs the reader in the first ...more

343 likes · Like · see review

Nov 22, 2010 mark monday rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mnemonic-devices, these-fragile-lives, into-the-past, alpha-team

atwood's Booker Prize-winning novel is a slow and melancholy downward movement, one in which the melancholy becomes cumulative. despite the sad and tragic tone, there are many paths to pure enjoyment present: through the precise, judgmental, dryly amusing recollections of the narrator as she recounts her current life and her past life between the world wars; through the intense, intimate, yet almost metaphorical scenes of two lovers connecting, not connecting, reconnecting; through the wonderful atwood's Booker Prize-winning novel is a slow and melancholy downward movement, one in which the melancholy becomes cumulative. despite the sad and tragic tone, there are many paths to pure enjoyment present: through the precise, judgmental, dryly amusing recollections of the narrator as she recounts her current life and her past life between the world wars; through the intense, intimate, yet almost metaphorical scenes of two lovers connecting, not connecting, reconnecting; through the wonderful pastiche of golden era science fantasy tales featuring mute sacrificial victims, blind child assassins, erotic peach women, deadly lizard men. but despite those paths to enjoyment, each narrative strand is based in despair, in missed opportunities, in moribund ritual, in the end of things. there is no wish fulfillment available on any level, and the novel's main mystery - although surprising and having a revenge-filled punch at the end - is still such a sad one to contemplate. motivations are revealed, characters you thought you knew become transformed, reversals of fortune happen in the space of a paragraph, and yet what i was left with by the end was a sadness at recognizing the impossibility of true happiness, true love, true fulfillment. well, at least in the world of Blind Assassin!

the novel is bleak. and yet it is beautiful as well, and truly compassionate towards the two women at its heart. the writing itself is, in a word, awesome. i'm not sure there is an English language writer living who can construct so many artful, evocative, poetic passages without sliding into over-writing. time and again i would stop to re-read a phrase or a paragraph just to enjoy the beauty and depth of what was written. nor does Blind Assassin beat the reader down with despair; much of the time i was so absorbed with the careful description of life in port ticonderoga between the wars and with enormously well-developed characters that i was able to not feel as if i was in a boat slowly drifting towards a waterfall. but in the end, that waterfall was there, and the characters and the reader all eventually tumble over. such as sad experience!

ONLY SPOILERS AHEAD:

poor laura chase, the secret and tragic hero of Blind Assassin. a fascinating, frustrating character. by the end, her motivations revealed, it all made so much sense. not a temptress, neither vindictive nor vacant, but simply a person out of place and out of her time. her motivation: to do good, to understand God, to live for herself, to not live in a world of deceit or corruption. i fell in love with her a little bit. but really, she's too deep for me, too strange, too...not for this world.

iris griffen: i was reminded of many things when trying to understand her character: the tunnel-vision of those madly in love, their inability to recognize the thoughts and feelings of others; the frustrating blankness of those who let life carry them along, the placidity that may appear to conceal depth but often is only a symptom of disengagement; and the potential villainy of that passivity, that blankness. this is a woman who thoughtlessly destroys her sister's reason for living, who does nothing when that sister is carted off to an asylum, who rejects the obvious need for love from her daughter, who lets her daughter and granddaughter get carted away from her, whose primary attribute is inaction. until she is, at long last, able to engage in some good old fashioned revenge. Blind Assassin has a pair of truly repulsive villains, but the the reader is not allowed to see inside of them. their motivations remain both shallow and shadowy. but iris griffen is the real deal: a character whose motivations the reader comes to understand, a person whose yearning for love and for redemption and for independence is expressed in no uncertain terms, a woman who is rendered so three-dimensionally that the reader comes to understand almost every part of her, a villain whose passivity allows the destruction of those she should protect. ...more

178 likes · Like · see review

May 25, 2015 Jan Rice rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, morality-justice, detective-mystery-crime

I read this book previously in the early 2000s via an audio version and proceeded to forget it. Doubtless it's not the only book I've forgotten, but this time it happened without the excuse of multiple intervening decades. And not every forgotten book emits a "reread me" compulsion as this one did, faint and intermittent though it may have been. Is this why I ultimately acquiesced?

The culprit may be that enticing cover picture on the oversized paperback I picked up sometime later from the Daeda ...more

18 likes · Like · see review

Jan 26, 2013 Arun Divakar rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

The story of every ocean is woven from the strands of a river. Carrying thousands of memories, hopes and dreams with them they flow sometimes wantonly and sometimes sluggishly to their inevitable fate.There is a loss of identity which marks a rivers union with the ocean. A way in which an individual is pushed into the collective and is never heard of again. Margaret Atwood told me a story that in my mind was very similar to the relation between the river and the ocean. The sea was named Iris Cha The story of every ocean is woven from the strands of a river. Carrying thousands of memories, hopes and dreams with them they flow sometimes wantonly and sometimes sluggishly to their inevitable fate.There is a loss of identity which marks a rivers union with the ocean. A way in which an individual is pushed into the collective and is never heard of again. Margaret Atwood told me a story that in my mind was very similar to the relation between the river and the ocean. The sea was named Iris Chase and the river was her sister Laura Chase. I must say that this is one of the most beautiful books I have read to date in terms of the poetic language, the narrative style and the characters.

This novel works like the relation between the rivers and the sea. At first there are marked differences between the two. However beyond the point of one flowing into the other, there is no more discerning the two. Similarly there are multiple genres at play here at the initial stages. There is a fantasy story peppered with Sci Fi, a love story which is dripping physical passion, an excellent gothic drama and a family memoir wrapped in the guise of historic fiction. With each passing chapter, these mix into one other and by the time the end is reached all of them tie together to form a convincing and satisfactory climax. Then again this is the story of the Chase sisters Iris and Laura who are in no way similar to each other. Laura walks with her head somewhere in the stratosphere and in no way does she belong to hardnosed practicality. Iris here appears like something in the background , say a piece of furniture which you hardly pay attention to even though she is the narrator. It is then a mark of brilliance from the author how she unveils the brilliant sheen of this character towards the end of the novel. For all her strangeness, I would have loved to take a walk with Laura Chase and in all possibility I would have come off this meeting with knowing next to nothing about her than when I began the walk !

What is Margaret Atwood without the beautiful language ! I read her books only for this poetic flow or so I feel. In her short stories and Handmaid's Tale , I have let myself be carried off by her prose only to be washed ashore after the last line on the last page. Look at this : When she says that There is nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy , I hear its echoes in today's journalism and a lot of books of late. The prose keeps flowing and I feel drenched in it.

A beautiful book. The favorite quotes are far too many to put down here. Take a look at them here on the site and you will know why I said so. Highly recommended ! ...more

16 likes · Like · see review

Nov 19, 2011 Brian rated it really liked it

It is extremely difficult to pen a novel with multiple narrators, changing perspectives from first to third person, and especially writing a "book within a book" - but Atwood pulls it off and makes it look effortless. "The Blind Assassin" is well worth the investment of time (for those of you that shy away from its hefty number of pages) - the action moves smoothly and Atwood's characters are completely engrossing and interesting. Well worth the Man-Booker prize in 2000. ...more

13 likes · Like · see review

Jul 31, 2012 Chinook rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1-kindle, canada, ww2, signed-by-author, feminism

I highlighted a lot of stuff I wanted to comment on in my Kindle. It's at home, but since we moved I don't have internet there. Hopefully I'll remember to come back and add more to this.

In the meantime, I loved this book. I loved that it had me thinking several things about who wrote the alternate stories or even who was with whom at various points in the story. I liked the fantasy bit well enough, but I loved the stories of Laura and Iris. I wish I'd read this sooner - I've had it since I lived ...more

5 likes · Like · see review

May 12, 2009 Bill rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: lit-fiction, favorites, 1001-books, fiction

One of my favorite books ever.

4 likes · Like · see review

Sep 22, 2007 Nate D rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: post-modernism, favorites, canada

I liked Oryx and Crake even more but that's more a result of my personal biases. This is perhaps Atwood's most accomplished work, in both form and content. ...more

1 like · Like · see review