The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin is a mystery and a tragedy. The tragedy lies in the very fact that it is a mystery at all - a mystery to Iris Chase, the narrator, and a mystery to we, the reader, complicit in Iris's crime by realising the tragedy too late. Swept along by rhetoric and reminiscence, we overlook human failings until the failure has exacted its bitter toll, so that in the end all that Iris is capable of is writing, and all that we can do is read.So what is it like to read Atwood's tenth (and Booker-Prize-winning) novel? The first quarter of the book establishes the framework of the storytelling: one part that consists of news articles and chapters from a posthumously-published work of dubious authorship detailing the lives of a pair of doomed lovers, followed by a part in which Iris, now an old woman, reflects on the events leading up to the suicide of her sister Laura. As such, it jumps around a lot - through narrative devices and through time - and doesn't really settle down until close to the 200-page mark. It's a challenging opening segment, but once we're acquainted with the backdrop to the Chase family saga we begin to peer into the early lives of the Chase sisters - by far the most engaging parts of the book.The dominant period covered by Iris's memoirs are the years following her arranged marriage to the wealthy industrialist Richard Griffen sometime in the mid-1930s. Griffen, together with his sister Winifred, plays the villain of the piece, but he's a figure never fully articulated by Iris - as she herself admits: " I've failed to convey Richard, in any rounded sense. He remains a cardboard cutout. I know that. I can't truly describe him, I can't get a precise focus: he's blurred, like the face in some wet, discarded newspaper." Laura blames Richard for the death of her bankrupted father, whose body she finds whilst Iris is off honeymooning. Richard takes it upon himself to bring Laura under his care, and from there things only get worse.It's no easy plot to summarise in a few lines, and the split-narrative device complicates things further. But that device is rewarding in the end, even if it's sometimes too clever for its own good, and certainly too clever to render the sorrow of Laura's brief existence as anything other than an observed phenomenon, not an experiential one. That's the problem here - Atwood's work has always seemed like a beautiful puzzle to me, ornamented with the detritus of the genre or period from which she draws, but which conveys its emotion through a prism of clever wording. It's something to admire, to learn from, but my enjoyment as a reader stems from my appreciation of her craft, not from the impact of her storytelling.Despite this, The Blind Assassin tells a convincing story with the poetic and often witty language you'd expect from Atwood. It also offers a damning verdict on its narrator's complicity in her sister's death. When given the opportunity to assist in her father's business she is disinterested and incompetent, but unwilling to consider other forms of employment; when presented with an arranged marriage she is meekly compliant; whilst engaged in an affair she is self-pitying but savours the risks and pleasures; and when a grotesque crime is being committed right before her eyes she is oblivious to the point of guilt. Iris is married off to Richard as part of her father's last-ditch attempt to save his business, but it's an act that need not have occurred at all if she'd shown the same willingness to make her own way in life as Laura had. She claims to despise her marriage to her father's former business rival but delights in the sartorial benefits granted by his wealth, just as her repeated claims about fear of exposure to Alex are suspect when, in fact, she's receiving gifts of one kind from her husband and of another kind from her lover. Meanwhile, Richard subdues Laura by claiming to know Alex's whereabouts - a lie, apparently, but one that works and convinces Laura that her suffering is for a purpose.Is any of what ultimately transpires Iris's fault for not reading the situation more clearly? If so, then we're also complicit in the crime by not reading the signs she missed before it was too late, and it is a credit to Atwood that she keeps them so well-hidden. Perhaps the question isn't even worth asking when the victim is beyond saving, but does that mean Iris is beyond saving too? She writes it all down before it's too late for her - her heart is failing - to get at a truth that came too late for Laura, but what for? When she admits the book attributed to Laura was in fact written by her it's explained as an act of revenge disguised as a memorial, so where does that leave the subsequent material now that everyone is either dead or absent? Iris's newspaper obituary hints that perhaps what we ultimately hold in our hands is a tome compiled by her granddaughter, and that act of compiling suggests some sort of reconciliation after the fact.Stories, remembrance, redemption, betrayal - all told against a backdrop of early-twentieth-century history. Atwood has a penchant for profound one-liners too, passed off like afterthoughts: "We need the mammalian huddle: too much solitude is bad for the eyesight", or: "They'd learned a genial contempt for their father, who couldn't read Latin, not even badly, as they did" are typical of her wordplay and humour, and they sustain interest in what is sometimes a laborious read.

First thought was, I think this might have been a really good 350 page novel. Unfortunately it’s almost twice the size and as cluttered with random detail as an attic. In this sense it’s a typical Booker Prize winner (for me the only time the Booker judges have got even close to being on the money in the past decade is Hilary Mantel).Ostensibly The Blind Assassins tells the story of two sisters and their relationships with two men at either ends of the political spectrum – Iris marries the industrialist and fascist sympathiser Richard Griffen, her sister Laura is infatuated with a communist agitator, Alex Thomas. This all takes place in the years before WW2. The two girls grow up in an idyllic house called Avilion (Avalon was the island King Arthur was taken after being wounded and Atwood presents way of life at Avilion as something equally wounded and on the verge of expiring). The girls’ childhood was probably my favourite part of this novel which has many tiers and many stories within stories (too many). For me Atwood’s at her best when she isn’t trying to be too clever, when she drops her penchant for melodrama and rather self-defeating literary juggling acts.There’s also a novel within this novel. Alex Thomas to survive writes pulp fiction for magazines and invents Planet Zycron. For the most part Planet Zycron is pure silliness. Kind of fun as a narrative Alex makes up while in bed with his lover but wholly implausible as a novel that has received critical acclaim and is still in print fifty years later.Also, I’m afraid I’m not really a great fan of Atwood’s prose. Sometimes it reminds me of the literary equivalent of elderly people wearing teenage clothes. Like this this observation which starts off great but ends up like chewing gum. “Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later. Then he finds out. Then his dick falls off.” She’s also got an annoying habit of using two consecutive metaphors for the same observation. Or else using a metaphor that is so wacky that it creates more confusion than clarity - as when bread is described as ''white and soft and flavorless as an angel's buttock.”The central male character, Richard Griffin, is a feminist’s wet dream. He’s so conclusively vile that it becomes like a fancy dress costume. Impossible to take serious. Ditto, his sister Winnifred. A pair of 19th century monsters in a 20th century novel. Pantomime versions of the fabulously wicked Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle in Portrait of a Lady. Patriarchal male bullying has been done with so much more artistry and subtlety (and plausibility) – Casaubon with Dorothea in Middlemarch for example or the King Lear father in Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres which I’m presently reading. There’s a strong element of feminist crowd pleasing in this utterly one dimensional portrait of patriarchal tyranny. Ironically it also serves to make you like Iris, his wife, less.The novel revolves on a central twist, you could almost say it’s the novel’s raison d’etre, and this is the clever and engaging part of this novel - the two sisters become the same woman with two contrasting fates: Iris conforms and survives at a ghastly price, Laura refuses to compromise and dies. The problem is all the clutter heaped around this central and fascinating theme.