On my Bookshelf: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

 “Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse.”

The Blind Assassin is a novel about many things. It’s a novel about growing up during the early years of the 20^th century. It’s a novel about sisters. It’s a novel about the rise and decline of a great family. It’s a novel about the failure of a marriage agreed to for economic reasons. It’s also a novel within a novel. But most of all it’s a novel about regrets.

            The chapters of the book alternate between the life story of Iris Chase and parts of the novel-within-the-novel, also titled The Blind Assassin. Iris, now an old and rather lonely woman, writes down the story of her and her sister Laura’s life. In the beginning it is not clear why or for whom she does this – or even that she is doing it, but as the novel progresses, the reader learns that the addressee is Iris’ estranged granddaughter. Confusing? Maybe a little. But Atwood deliberately uses confusion, especially at the beginning of this book, when one has to work out who the narrator is, and what the segements of the novel (and the clippings from newspapers interspersed with them) have to do with it.

            The novel-within-the-novel was published under the name of Laura Chase some time after her suicide, and from the beginning it is implied that it is quasi-autobiographical. As the narrative progresses, and the reader witnesses the decline of the Chase family’s button factory, and Iris’ marriage to a rival businessman in a last ditch attempt to save it, this charade begins to slowly unravel, until, close to the very end of her life’s account, Iris admits to being the actual author of The Blind Assassin.

            This avowal, however, also proves the reader’s suspicion that Iris is the one who had the affair described in the novel-within-the-novel, and that her husband is not the actual father of her deceased daughter – and thus grandfather – of her niece. Margaret Atwood displays the whole range of her skill in plotting and pacing in this novel. In only revealing bits and pieces at a time, and she keeps the reader on her toes throughout the book. Iris’ commentary about her life in the present, though often witty and dry, paints a vivid and haunting picture of life at old age with an estranged niece and no other family left alive, and only the daughter of the Chase’s former cook to look after her. It also, however, serves to foreshadow later developments in the book, and fill the reader with an uncanny sense of foreboding.

            Writing down the story of her life is an attempt to explain the past, and her ancestry to her niece Sabrina. It is also an attempt to justify her own actions to herself, and a way of finding reasons behind the tragedies of her family – her father’s and sister’s suicide, the estrangement from her daughter Aimee (who also died prematurely), and, of course, the estrangement from Sabrina.

            The novel ends with the announcement of Iris’ death, which also includes the fact that Sabrina will take care of her grandmother’s house, where she will presumably find the life account that the reader has just finished reading.

And this is why The Blind Assassin is not only about regrets, but also about hope, even if it’s hope against hope.