She begins telling this story without knowing for whom she is writing (eventually she arrives at a poignant if trite answer). Wrapped around the entire narrative is the frame story of 82-year-old Iris Griffen (née Chase). Yet I still struggle with Atwood’s style, and that made it difficult for me to embrace The Blind Assassin in the way it might, one could argue, deserve.Ītwood employs an arsenal of storytelling techniques. It’s the perfect kind of ambiguous tragedy that most fictional memoirs try to be, and there are moments that are truly heartbreaking. But even if one stripped away all such accolades and attempted to deal with the text itself, The Blind Assassin would still be an imposing story, intimidating because of its intimacy. Apparently she’s some bigshot Canadian author with plenty of novels and short stories out there, somewhere, just winning awards and acclaim left and right. And this Margaret Atwood person, she’s no slouch either. It won the Booker Prize, one of only three Canadian books to do so. Much like Cat’s Eye, I’m finding The Blind Assassin difficult to review.
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