My god, Atwood just can't go wrong, can she? I've heard 'The Blind Assassin' called her masterpiece, but I suppose I'd like to finish the rest of her My god, Atwood just can't go wrong, can she? I've heard 'The Blind Assassin' called her masterpiece, but I suppose I'd like to finish the rest of her oeuvre before making such a grandiose statement.
The novel, however, is quite a tour de force. Not unusual for Atwood, the narrative is more like a nest of Russian doll-eggs. There are four primary storylines: that of Iris Chase as an old woman narrating her experience as a woman and her life history; that of the Chase family history, narrated; the adulterous mystery of the novel within the novel (also called The Blind Assassin); and finally, the sci-fi/fantasy novel within THAT novel. But the threads are legion, and Atwood as usual has an undeniably deft hand juggling them all. Oddly enough, I feel like this book would be difficult to follow or keep track of, or simply become bogged down by all of its various stories, in anyone else's hands.
But Atwood's got the experience down-pat, and something I find invariably fascinating in writers is discovering how their voices change in their later years; for example, at times, this novel felt like close kin to 'Cat's Eye' in the sense that it was obsessed with the family as a sort of social microcosm; the space where petty dramas germinate and are are capable of mapping the many conflicts and terrors of 'real life.' Also: the jealousies and cruelties of children and girls that we don't expect; the intense interest in the status of the artist (particularly the conflation of the artist's private life with their work) in contemporary society...but all of these tackled as if they were being approached from a more distant, more experienced, more cynical vantage point. Elaine Risley and Iris aren't similar characters, but I almost feel that Iris *could* be a possible outcome for Elaine's life, were the circumstances right.
All of this is a compliment, simply to say that Atwood's styling here is impeccable, engaging, and absolutely hilarious in a way I didn't expect (I was cackling like an old witch when Iris describes her responses to greedy archivists and literary critics). Iris and Laura are two of her most fully-envisioned figures; the town felt positively tactile to me throughout much of the novel, and the narrative is incredibly epic in scope even as it's so terrifyingly insular--almost asphyxiating--at times.
Honestly, I hardly think that I'll be able to do much more with this review than offer biased, possibly blind praise. This is right up there with the best Atwood, certainly, and in many ways synthesizes the concerns of a lifetime of work. Highly, highly recommended.
