Wednesday, 23 February 2011

Alias Grace: A Novel



Alias Grace: A Novel
Margaret Atwood | 1997-01-01 00:00:00 | Anchor | 480 | Fiction Other
Although I've been a fan of Margaret Atwood's for many years (as any good Canadian woman should be!), I usually enjoyed her actual writing--her poetic turn of a phrase, her quirky descriptions--more than the plots of her novels. Alias Grace shows her as a masterful storyteller. The first time I read it I could hardly put it down, so anxious was I to learn the ultimate fate of Grace Marks, but forced myself to read it more slowly to savor living in the Victorian times Atwood re-created in palpable detail. As soon as I finished, all I wanted to do was go back to the beginning and start over. For a month I resisted, and then re-read it slowly, studying her art of writing. A couple of years later now, I have re-read it for a third time, and am still in awe of the multiple layers of this story, the painstaking research into the life of Grace Marks, the simple language used by the uneducated Grace that yet reveals her very clever mind, the delightful overlay of quilting patterns, the details of domestic work in Victorian Canada, the emergent state of psychiatry, and the skillful unfolding of an unpredictable plot. The variety of forms of writing is also intriguing, the monologues of Grace and the correspondence between Dr. Jordan and his friends and family. Alias Grace is a true masterpiece, the most brilliant Canadian novel ever, I would say.
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