The Blind Assassin; Margaret Atwood

I really liked this book, although my friend Judith thought it in need of a good pair of editing shears. In that sense, perhaps it’s a book best served up with a long summer vacation. It’s a story that is told in the present about events set between the two wars. So you find yourself travelling back and forth between these two time periods: the present world of an old woman, and the events of the past as she remembers them. The structure of the novel, with the past and present, along with a novel told within a novel (The Blind Assassin), could have been very confusing (take note Mr Faulkner), and I did make some wrong assumptions about who was who in the past, which in the end is the very point of the story as it finally unfolds.

The other thing is that her writing is so lovely, and descriptions of the everyday are really very poetic. But, despite all that, why is it on the Top 100 books? I think it just ticks all the right boxes – strong story, exquisitely told, characters that will linger for a while, and cleverly structured. Oh, and a Booker Prize. But it’s not a WOW factor book. Perhaps that is its greatness, the subtlety and effortlessness of it all.

As an old woman you see Iris struggling to maintain some sense of control and autonomy in her life while at the same time it’s clear that her life is shrinking and her capacity to care for herself is diminishing. But, you can see why it would be so important to her when you see how little of her life was under her own control. As a young woman her life is determined by her father until she is pimped off by him to a business competitor in order to save the father from financial ruin. It’s a scene in the book that is awful not merely because of the callousness of the father, but for the way in which she succumbs to the demand without protest. It was like watching a life snuffed out. Even when she finds some ‘passion’ with Alex the Bolshevik, he is demeaning and cruel, and despite his dependence on her, he never relinquishes his power or authority. Is this why women weren’t signing up for the revolution in droves? Ultimately it is her complacency and complicity which Iris blames for all that happened to her. Interestingly, while it’s the men who hold the power, Reeny and Winifred both play their part in keeping Iris in her place.

The moral of the story is surely is to wash up as you go. A mountain of dirty dishes at the end of your life is just too depressing, and God knows, doesn’t the evening pass so quickly.