The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up o you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring." (p, 190)

I read this book in 2002 and I remember liking it--it started my love for Atwood's work--but didn't remember a lot of detail about it. I just re-read it and was completely impressed by what a great writer Margaret Atwood is. The story is the lives of two sisters and mixed into it is the tale of the Blind Assassin (and a few lizard men of Xenor). It is fabulously well-constructed and beautifully written.

"Breakfasts, picnics, ocean voyages, costume balls, newspapers, boating on the river. Such items do not assort very well with tragedy. But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of the car from the bridge." (p. 417)

This book counts toward the Canadian Book Challenge.