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There are many fantastic, malicious, and delightful ways within
literature in which authors can manipulate their readers’ emotions towards characters
and steer their trains of thought over the difficult terrain. Some authors
plant red herrings or false clues that are striking enough for the reader to
latch onto and then try to shape mysterious ending around this one item. Others
opt for the unreliable narrator: a character whose word we are forced to believe,
as they are the ones telling the story, but then learning through actions and
events that this is a dire mistake. And then there are some authors that very
subtly twist the mechanics of genre to better suit the tale they are trying to
tell and fill it with drama, intrigue, and shocking revelations. This latter is
a trick that I have just finished getting intimately familiar with, having just
closed the cover on a six-hundred-page tome of flashback and reverie by
Margaret Atwood:
The Blind Assassin.
It has been more than fifty years since the death of Iris
Chase’s sister, Laura, but the event still haunts her. As she nears the end of
her life, Iris begins to write an autobiographical tale of money, society, neglect,
secrets, betrayal, and self-sabotage with two sisters as the protagonists.
The Blind Assassin explores the power of the story-within-a-story.
The book for the most part, told in flashback from the point of view of Iris as
an old woman in the ‘90s, recounts the childhood of the two girls growing up
rich and with social standing in the community, as well as motherless in Ontario.
A rich history with a lack of real relationships, education, and awareness,
this part of the book traverses through time, giving us a panoramic tour of
twentieth century history from its lavish beginnings through to its most dire
times: the Great Depression, the threat of Communism, the Spanish Civil war,
and finally, WWII.
Splintered into chapters and historic milestones, the book
then has the semi-fictional story of The Blind Assassin, a tale about a
doomed romance between lovers from two different worlds who must meet
clandestinely and discreetly. This is the story in which Atwood exercises the
manipulative power of both the unreliable narrator (sort of) and the power of
planting the red herring. Within this story there is yet another story: a science
fiction pulp novel that is being written in ‘real-time’ by the doomed lovers. Characters,
words, and phrases from this tale then sneakily escape into the real world and
this is where the book succeeds in luring, hooking, and steering the reader
right to the end. While this book has been out for over two decades, I don’t
wish to explore the genius of this part further for fear of spoiling the end.
It's quite astounding how expertly and ingeniously Atwood
fleshes out this world and these characters without actually giving them food
that would make them grow correctly. By this, I mean relationships. The story
of Iris and Laura is one that is lacking in love, all kinds: familial, spousal,
even friendly. If there is love at the bottom of anything, it is either
very light or the watery film of the world is so murky that it obscures
everything that is fine.
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Closing the cover, we are left with more questions and need
a moment to rationalise and process everything that just happened over a
lifetime. We get an idea of who the blind assassin is, but it’s the way in
which they are blind that piques and stirs the problem-solving part of the
brain.
Winner of the 2000 Booker Prize, The Blind Assassin
is a wonderfully compelling and intriguing read filled with historic glamour,
drama, tragedy, and adaption. I would definitely recommend reading it if you
are an Atwood fan, though it does pose some delightful challenges and hurdles
to overcome.
Author: Margaret Atwood, 2000
Published: Virago Press, London, 2001. Pictured edition
published by Virago Press in 2009.