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Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin

© Catten Ely

Margaret Atwood's first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969. I just finished her 38th book, The Blind Assassin, which won the 2000 Booker Prize for Fiction and the International Association of Crime Writers Dashiell Hammett Award. This woman can write!

Atwood weaves a tight story - or four in this case.

The book opens:
Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into a shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left of her but charred smithereens.

The narrator is Iris Chase Griffen, a once-wealthy widow who is now 83 and reflecting on her mistakes. But don't expect this to be the dry reminiscent ramblings of an old woman. The present-day Iris makes mature comments about aging and the frustration of growing old. But the younger Iris, the one we encounter in flashbacks, is youthful, idealistic, and naïve. It's clearly the same voice, but Atwood skillfully draws the reader into both of Iris's stories. At the same time, newspaper clippings regarding events in Iris's life appear from time to time, sometimes in support of her opinions, sometimes in contrast. For example:

The Toronto Star, May 26, 1945
Questions Raised in City Death
Special to the Star

A coroner's inquest has returned a verdict of accidental death in last week's St. Claire Ave. fatality. Miss Laura Chase, 25, was travelling west on the afternoon of May 18 when her car swerved through the barriers protecting a repair site on the bridge and crashed into the ravine below, catching fire. Miss Chase was killed instantly...

Also within Iris's story are chapters from Laura's book. Published posthumously in 1947, Laura's novel, The Blind Assassin tells the story of a socialite and her mysterious lover, a radical leftist on the run. No names are ever used, and Atwood cleverly pulls off the frequent use of "he" and "she" as the sole identifiers, a tricky undertaking that could become cumbersome but never does. She highlights the painful difference between classes and reveals both lovers' doubts about the others' commitment.

Within Laura's novel is yet another story. This one is a pulp science fiction tale told in serial to the mystery woman by her lover during their trysts.

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