The Blind Assassin (Audio Cassette) | 
 enlarge | Author: Margaret Atwood
Creator: Lorelei (narrator) King
Publisher: HarperCollins Audio
Category: Book
List Price: £13.99
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Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 649534
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged Ed
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 5.3 x 4.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0007113609
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780007113606
ASIN: 0007113609
Publication Date: October 16, 2000
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Amazon.co.uk Review
"It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward", writes Margaret Atwood, towards the end of her impressive and complex new novel, The Blind Assassin. It's a melancholic account of why writers write--and readers read--and one that frames the different lives told through this book. The Blind Assassin is (at least) two novels. At the end of her life, Iris Griffen takes up her pen to record the secret history of her family, the romantic melodrama of its decline and fall between the two world wars. Conjuring a world of prosperity and misery, marriage and loneliness, the central enigma of Iris's tale is the death of her sister, Laura Chase, who "drove a car off a bridge" at the end of the Second World War. Suicide or accident? The story gradually unfolds, interspersed with sketches of Iris's present-day life--confined by age and ill-health--and a second novel, The Blind Assassin by Laura Chase. Allowing a glimpse into a clandestine love affair between a privileged young woman and a radical "agitator" on the run, this version of The Blind Assassin is an overt act of seduction: the exchange of sex and story about an imaginary world of Sakiel-Norn (a play with the potential, and convention, of fantasy and sci-fi).With the intelligence, subtlety and remarkable characterisation associated with Atwood's writing (from her first novel, The Edible Woman through to the best-selling Alias Grace), these two stories play with one another--sustaining an uncertainty about who has done what to whom and why to the very end of this compelling book. --Vicky Lebeau This review refers to the hardcover edition of this title.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 51 more reviews...
 Blindingly beautiful August 9, 2008
H. C. EDWARDS (south wales)
The Blind Assassin is spellbinding, haunting and bewitching. Atwood's gloriously conrolled use of poignant and delicate prose encapsulates love, passion and loss throughout three time periods with a true understanding of the human spirit which makes for a timeless and unforgetable piece of literature.
Not since Guy de Maupassant has an author managed to so untterly captivate my imagination and utterly absorb me into their imaginings. Atwood's intricately constructed narrative weaves seamlessly in and out of time and landscape involving the reader so intensely it is almost disappointing when the story finally reaches it's powerfully emotional conclusion. The novel is not only readable, it is hard not to be 'read' back by it; the characters are not only so beautifully defined as to be believed but are also so real as to be empathised with.
I was sorry to finish this book, it left me breathless and moved in a way that few others before have managed and deserves to become a 'classic' in every sense of the word.
An enduring masterpiece March 24, 2008
Philip Spires (La Nucia, Spain)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Sometimes, when reading a big book, one gets the feeling that the author set out to achieve size, as if that in itself might suggest certain adjectives from a reader or reviewer - weighty, significant, deep, serious, complex, extensive, perhaps. Sometimes - rarely, in fact - one reads a big book and becomes lost in its size, lost in the sense that one ceases to notice the hundreds passing by, as the work creates its own time, defines its own experience, shares its own world. Even then, reaching the end can often be merely trite, just a running out of steam, the process thoroughly engaging, the product, however, something of a let down. Rarely, very rarely indeed, one reads a big book that actually needs its size, justifies itself, continues to surprise as well as enchant and then, finally, stuns. Margaret Atwood's Blind Assassin is such a book, a giant in every sense, a masterpiece beyond question.
Blind Assassin was awarded the Booker prize in 2000 and charts intersecting histories of two well-to-do Canadian families, Chase and Griffen. The two Chase sisters, Iris and Laura, are quite different people. Born into the relative opulence of a Canadian manufacturing family, they have a private education of sorts, experienced throughout and yet alongside something vaguely like a childhood. Various aspects of twentieth century history impinge upon their lives and eventually force their family to reassess its status. Economic downturn, war and family tragedy take their toll on the father, who becomes less able to manage either his own life or his business. Something has to give. Ways of coping must be found.
Iris, the elder sister, is the first person narrator of about half of the book, the other half being devoted to a book within a book, a novel in the name of Laura, the younger sister. This novel, entitled The Blind Assassin, is an eclectic mix of experience, sex, fantasy and politics. It has made a name for Laura and retains a significant cult following many years after its publication. Laura, herself, died in a car accident. She drove off a bridge into a ravine. The car belonged to Iris. There was never any real explanation for the event.
Iris, meanwhile, has been married off to an older man, a Griffen, who seems to treat her like so much chattel. But then he is an industrialist with the wherewithal, not to mention capital, to assist the bride's family business in its time of need. Iris, therefore, experiences the Canadian equivalent of an arranged marriage. Perhaps the word marriage is a little overstated. The partnership could be better described as a merger, or a union, if that were not a dirty word because of its political connotation.
And so the octogenarian Iris, clearly anticipating the end of her days, embarks upon a cathartic outpouring of personal and family history in the hope that an estranged granddaughter might just understand a little about other peoples' motives.
The book takes us through Canada and north America, across to Europe, via an imagined universe, to political commitment, direct action and its inevitable reaction. Iris needs to write it all down. And so she works her story out, constructing it, perhaps reconstructing it, maybe inventing it from memory and relived experience against a backdrop of contemporary Canada and her own failing health. Her vulnerability, in the end, is our debt, our penance, perhaps. She is a wise old woman with much to hide, but her acerbic wit is undiminished by age, her observations of others stunningly perspicacious.
It is not often that a novel, a mere flight of another's fancy, achieves the subtle, stunning and surely enduring power of the Blind Assassin.
 Uneven, and largely unnecessary... December 29, 2007
bloodsimple (nottingham, uk)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale and, while I normally steer away from Booker prizewinners, I decided to give this a go.
It would certainly be unreasonable to deny that Atwood has a formidable command of the English language, and great skill in deploying it. There are about 7,000 metaphors and similes here, and nearly every one of them works. In that respect, I found it a surprisingly easy read, with a good flow to the prose, and a well-established context.
However, I would quibble with the idea that this is a great book. Even after 600 pages, I didn't feel I knew Iris very well - she was often an opaque figure, who really only became real when she got old and crabby. The early Iris was a blank, remote cipher. Laura was, I presume, intended to be enigmatic, but for me she held no real allure.
The narrative is odd. Considering it covers an entire life, it often dwells on the inconsequential, and skips over the important. Key events like births, weddings, deaths; these are all dispatched far too quickly. Maybe this was intentional, but it didn't read that way - it just read as uneven, and as if the reader didn't matter.
All in all, there was no dramatic tension at any point. The story drifted on, albeit that the splicing between one "story" and the other was poorly done, adding to the unevenness. I didn't really care what happened to Laura, or who was related to whom. It was all background, no foreground; and Atwood's failure to really emphasise what was important left it all feeling like a very intelligently-produced screensaver.
For me, this book is about 300 pages too long, and lacks a clear purpose. It tells of a life that has little to recommend its' telling. Maybe the Booker was a "lifetime achievement" rather than for this book alone, or maybe the Booker just goes to overrated, over-long books.
A touch overrated September 5, 2007
Jonathan Birch (Manchester)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
The Blind Assassin is an utterly postmodern tragedy of family life set in 1930s Canada, centred around the causes of the suicide of "authoress" Laura Chase, the narrator's sister. It's beguiling and richly detailed, but a little flabby too.
Atwood tells her story in three voices. Iris's memoir is interleaved with newspaper cuttings, drily documenting the novel's events, and with chapters of "The Blind Assassin," a novel within a novel. Reading them mixed together, as they're meant to be read, we're encouraged to consider the power and trustworthiness of the three voices. Atwood's theme is authorship: its origin, its responsibilities, its consequences and the myths that can engulf authors. The truth is elusive, and the narration routinely reveals more about the narrator than about the truth. The technique is brilliant - but a bit overused by Book XV.
In a nutshell, The Blind Assassin is everything that's bad and good about postmodern literature. The contrast of the three voices and the exploration of authorship is ingenious - but self-indulgence, writing for its own sake, with scant regard for plot or character, drags it down.
Iris is the only flesh-and-blood character in the novel - most characters' thoughts and motives remain a mystery, which is a surprise in a 650-page work. Richard Griffen is a cardboard ogre, a flimsy stereotype of what feminists think men are like - amazingly, the narrator even confesses that this is how she's portrayed him. What this novel lacks is a heart. Atwood piles on the detail, but never convinced me that she really knows what it's like for her characters - because of course she never lived through the '30s herself.
The Blind Assassin could have been halved in length. We learn Iris's opinions of cookies (tasteless, crumbly, greasy) and muffins (too big, too heavy) and essentially every opinion she has on everything. The book demands stamina, lots of it, and doesn't quite pay back the large outlay of time. The story is okay, with a couple of twists (though the big one is extremely predictable), and very readable, but moves at a very gentle pace.
If you're looking for an intelligent mystery (e.g. for holiday reading) let me recommend The Secret History by Donna Tartt. If you want a broadly similar story with the same sort of theme crammed into 200 pages rather than 650, try A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro. The Blind Assassin is enjoyable enough, but no masterpiece.
 Just too long! May 30, 2007
Pauline (Norfolk)
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
Parts of this book are fantastic and some of the writing is magical, but it is just too long. Some bits are very confusing as the story jumps around a lot and you have to work out who the chapter is about and when it is set. Worth the read, but only if you've got quite a bit of spare time as some of our book club just gave up on it.
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