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| Product Details |
| Margaret Atwood takes the art of storytelling to new heights in a dazzling new novel that unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist.<br><br>For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In <b>The Blind Assassin</b>, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious.<br> <br>The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a- novel. Entitled <b>The Blind Assassin</b>, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 194 |
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Key Information
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| Awards: |
2000 The Man Booker Prize |
| Authors: |
Margaret Atwood |
| Fiction Subgenre: |
Conflicts & Dualities |
| Fiction Genre: |
Family & Relationships |
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Professional Reviews
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London Review of Books: "THE BLIND ASSASSIN...possesses the unusual lyrical sensuousness that distinguished ALIAS GRACE (1996), Atwood's last major work. A complex rumination on narrative, it is as elegant and dynamic as its predecessor, but more contemplative and more edgy--and much more witty.", New York Times Book Review: "If we apply the old Forsterian standard that round characters are ones 'capable of surprising in a convincing way,' Atwood's new novel, for all its multilayered story-within-a-story-within-a-story construction, must be judged flat as a pancake. In THE BLIND ASSASSIN, overlong and badly written, our first impressions of the dramatis personae prove not so much lasting as total....[T]he two parts of Atwood's big new book feel like separate projects that have been soldered together rather than thematically connected. Worse still, nothing in either part gives a reader much desire to forge connections through inference.", New York Times: "The novel is largely unencumbered by the feminist ideology that weighed down such earlier Atwood novels as THE EDIBLE WOMAN and THE HANDMAID'S TALE, and for the most part it is also shorn of those books' satiric social vision. In fact, of all the author's books to date, THE BLIND ASSASSIN is most purely a work of entertainment--an expertly rendered Daphne du Maurieresque tale that showcases Ms. Atwood's narrative powers and her ardent love of the Gothic.", Dirda, Michael, Washington Post Book World: "For three days I could hardly put the book aside. Still, the novel sometimes verges close to the sentimental and often sounds like a pastiche of period writers....As for craftsmanship, the plot miters are perfect (though only the obtuse will fail to guess the two big revelations in the final pages); the voices, especially that of the elderly Iris Chase, quite mesmerizing; and the prose as touching or funny as Atwood wishes it to be. Yet as sheerly enjoyable as THE BLIND ASSASSIN is, I can't help but feel that the book may be just a little too easy somehow, that it covers its ground expertly but without really breaking into new imaginative territory. There's no surprise in finding it a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club....THE BLIND ASSASSIN may not be a groundbreaking work of art, but its smoothness, wit and mournful wisdom are deeply ingratiating. Would that all book club selections were as good as this one."
", Wineapple, Brenda, Nation: "Atwood writes an entertaining and bracing tale, fun to read, forgettable when finished." |
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Book Editions
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- Audio - Compact Disc
- September 30, 2005
- Btc Audio Books
- 5"(h) x 5.75"(w) x 1"(d), 0.4 lbs.
- 9780864924018
, - Audio - Compact Disc
- Unabridged
- May 17, 2005
- Random House
- 6"(h) x 5.25"(w) x 1.75"(d), 0.88 lbs.
- 9780739323694
, - Hardcover
- August 01, 2000
- Bloomsbury Pub Ltd
- 9780747549376
, - Hardcover
- 521
- September 01, 2000
- Bantam Dell Pub Group
- 9.5"(h) x 6.5"(w) x 1.5"(d), 2 lbs.
- 9780385475723
, - Hardcover
- 521
- September 30, 2000
- McClelland & Stewart Ltd
- 9780771008634
, - Paperback
- 521
- August 01, 2001
- Anchor Books
- 8"(h) x 5.25"(w) x 1"(d), 1 lbs.
- 9780385720953
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First Line
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| Publisher's Note: |
Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. |
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