Review: The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood was intriguing and cultivating from the get-go. Beginning with the line “10 days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove her car off a bridge”, the reader questions Laura’s manner automatically. The story retells the dramatic life of Iris Chase Griffen from the point of view of Iris herself in her old age, writing down the memories of her life for her successors in the family. The book also includes news snippets from different dates in Griffen’s life, and excerpts from an abstract sub-novel written by her sister Laura called “The Blind Assassin”. The whole book covers about 100 years, with Iris beginning her story describing her grandmother and ending with her death. It covers the eras of World War One, the Depression, and World War Two through the point of view of Canadians, both rich and poor.

Iris Chase Griffen was spunky in her elder life, but rather quiet and timid in her youth (with the exception of one scenario). As a senior, she was often told to stop doing something unsafe for someone her age, and found herself regretting her body’s uselessness as time went on. She is taken care of by Myra, daughter of Iris’ childhood nanny and mother figure.

By 2/3 of the novel’s completion, I noticed that Iris was overly, almost excessively aging. There were long paragraphs of her complaining about her age that I felt were boring and unnecessary.

Laura Chase was an extremely unusual character, and throughout the book I questioned whether I liked her or not. She was very naive and lived on extremes: she was either very happy or very upset. Also, she took everything literally, and questioned everything (when told to think twice before doing something, she asked, “why only twice?”) entertaining, but gradually annoying.

Iris is married to Richard Griffen, a well-known businessman, and also the enemy of her late father. Their marriage is unhappy and draining on Iris.

One main part of the book is The Blind Assassin, the novel Laura wrote. This story depicts two lovers, unnamed and referred to as “he” and “she”. There is little background knowledge of these two, all we know is she is sneaking away from a husband, and he is on the run for an unknown reason. Though this is somewhat confusing- and agitating as we don’t understand much of what’s going on)The two meet in gritty, inconspicuous sites for the affair. He, a freelance writer, tells her the story of a far off planet, Zycron, and its society. The story is conceptual and dystopian, themes resembling some of Atwoods’ other works.

Further, there was also excerpts of newspaper articles from Ontario-based newspapers such as Toronto Star and Globe And Mail. Personally, I found these articles scattered and fairly pointless: the dates jumped from 1939, to 1980 etc and it was hard to keep track even with the date in the corner. Also, by the climax of the novel I felt the articles broke the flow and were obtrusive to the storyline.

This was the type of book that, though extremely confusing at times during the novel, was brilliant when completed and when all of the puzzle pieces were put together.

I highly recommend for any readers who are up for an entertaining thinker!