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"I
look back over what I've written and I know it's wrong, not
because of what I've set down, but because of what I've omitted.
What isn't there has a presence, like the absence of light."
Last week we reread
The Blind Assassin, Canadian author Margaret
Atwood's Booker Prize-winning novel, and it was as marvelous as
when we first read it in 2000. Storytelling in the grand tradition
- a perfect book to curl up with of an evening as the days get
shorter, when one turns to literary substance in an uncertain
time.
Like a Russian matryoshka doll it offers up story nestled
inside story nestled inside story. Iris Chase Griffen is dying,
an octogenarian who has lived through most of the twentieth
century. She looks back on her life; Canadian history is the
tumultuous backdrop for a novel that is a tale of a family and the
relationship between two sisters. A story of class and money, love
and passion, and a mystery - the different strands of the novel
are braided together and to read here is to unravel. Iris looks
back at the people she has lost in her life - her
sister Laura Chase who died in a mysterious car accident in 1945
and her husband Richard Griffen, the wealthy industrialist, found
dead in 1947. Another strand tells of how Iris came to be married
to Richard, and of her estrangement with her sister Laura and of the
strange quartet they formed with Alex Thomas, the mysterious
political activist who entranced both the sisters. To
read here is not only to unravel, but to reveal the layers within
- there are excerpts from a novel also called The Blind
Assassin, apparently written by Laura and published posthumously,
of a secret love affair between a wealthy woman and her lover who is on the
run. Also, pieces of a
science fiction story that the lovers conjure up together. These
snippets - allegorical and metaphorical - tell of a
blind assassin who falls in love with his victim - a sacrificial
virgin who has had her tongue cut out - they learn each other and
fall in love through touch…. The science fiction Atwood has
dabbled in is more than palatable here in the small doses she offers
up. The
Blind Assassin is unputdownable - a strange layered story that reveals
Atwood's prose at its best - wry, intelligent, and beautifully
precise.
Read:
The
Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
Tags:
literature
canada
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