The Blind Assassin

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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.