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Available
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Description
Fiction. Mystery. Science Fiction. Historical Fiction. HTML:The bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments weaves together strands of gothic suspense, romance, and science fiction into one utterly spellbinding narrative, beginning with the mysterious death 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 fin… (more)
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Publication
Anchor (2001), Paperback, 521 pages
Pages
521
Physical description
521 p.; 5.24 x 0.98 inches
Awards
Booker Prize (Longlist — 2000)
Women's Prize for Fiction (Longlist — 2001)
Dublin Literary Award (Shortlist — 2002)
Audie Award (Finalist — 2001)
Governor General's Literary Award (Finalist — 2000)
Hammett Prize (Nominee — 2000)
Toronto Book Award (Nominee — 2001)
Booklist Editor's Choice: Adult Books (Fiction — 2000)
The Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read (Science Fiction and Fantasy)
Notable Books List (2001)
Media reviews
Die Lebensgeschichte der Iris hebt sich wohltuend von jenen Romanen ab, die junge Frauen der 'besseren' Gesellschaft nach einer privilegierten Kindheit in ein Erwachsenendasein ohne Brüche und Krisen führen. Dennoch ist es schade, dass Margaret Atwood ihrer Heldin letztlich so wenig 'Mumm'
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mitgibt - es müssen dreißig Jahre von Iris' Leben vergehen, bis sie zum ersten Mal aufbegehrt.
Margaret Atwood erzählt Iris' und Lauras Geschichte auf drei Ebenen: anhand von Iris' Rückblick, Lauras Manuskript und diversen Zeitungsausschnitten. Atwood hat mit "Der blinde Mörder" nicht nur die Geschichte eines Frauenlebens geschrieben, sondern auch einen historischen Roman, eine Liebesgeschichte, eine Sciencefiction-Story und die Geschichte zweier Schwestern. Sie belohnt das Interesse des Lesers mit einer Geschichte von außergewöhnlicher Dichte, der es gelingt, die sozialen, industriellen und politischen Ereignisse in einer kanadischen Kleinstadt nachzuzeichnen und eine Chronik des 20. Jahrhunderts darzustellen. Show Less
Margaret Atwood poses a provocative question in her new novel, "The Blind Assassin." How much are the bad turns of one's life determined by things beyond our control, like sex and class, and how much by personal responsibility? Unlike most folks who raise this question so that they can wag their
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finger -- she's made her bed, and so on -- Atwood's foray into this moral terrain is complex and surprising. Far from preaching to the converted, Atwood's cunning tale assumes a like-minded reader only so that she can argue, quite persuasively, from the other side. Show Less
In her tenth novel, Margaret Atwood again demonstrates that she has mastered the art of creating dense, complex fictions from carefully layered narratives, making use of an array of literary devices - flashbacks, multiple time schemes, ambiguous, indeterminate plots - and that she can hook her
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readers by virtue of her exceptional story-telling skills. The Blind Assassin is not a book that can easily be put to one side, in spite of its length and the fact that its twists and turns occasionally try the patience; yet it falls short of making the emotional impact that its suggestive and slippery plot at times promises. Show Less
Ms. Atwood's absorbing new novel, ''The Blind Assassin,'' features a story within a story within a story -- a science-fiction yarn within a hard-boiled tale of adultery within a larger narrative about familial love and dissolution. The novel is largely unencumbered by the feminist ideology that
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weighed down such earlier Atwood novels as ''The Edible Woman'' and ''The Handmaid's Tale,'' and for the most part it is also shorn of those books' satiric social vision. In fact, of all the author's books to date, ''The Blind Assassin'' is most purely a work of entertainment -- an expertly rendered Daphne du Maurieresque tale that showcases Ms. Atwood's narrative powers and her ardent love of the Gothic. Show Less
In her ingenious new tale of love, rivalry, and deception, The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood interweaves several genres — a confessional memoir, a pulp fantasy novel, newspaper clippings — to tease out the secrets behind the 1945 death of 25-year-old socialite Laura Chase.
Nearly 20 years ago, in speaking of her craft, the novelist Margaret Atwood observed that ''a character in a book who is consistently well behaved probably spells disaster for the book.'' She might have asserted the more general principle that consistent anything in a character can prove tedious.
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If we apply the old Forsterian standard that round characters are ones ''capable of surprising in a convincing way,'' Atwood's new novel, for all its multilayered story-within-a-story-within-a-story construction, must be judged flat as a pancake. In ''The Blind Assassin,'' overlong and badly written, our first impressions of the dramatis personae prove not so much lasting as total. Show Less
Margaret Atwood is the literary world’s greatest stunt woman. She leaps from heights, crashes through walls, and flies through flames that more prudent writers would never dare.
The title of her latest book, The Blind Assassin, announces its recklessness right up front. It’s a killer novel,
The title of her latest book, The Blind Assassin, announces its recklessness right up front. It’s a killer novel,
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all right, but it can see exactly where it’s going, even when we can’t. Show Less
LCC
PR9199.A8 B55
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Language
ISBN
0385720955 / 9780385720953