Coming Together

After finishing my most recent novel last week, I began Blind Assasin by Margaret Atwood over the weekend. I have anticipated this novel all year. Since reading the Handmaid's Tale I have read Ms. Atwood's poetry and placed many of her novels on my "to-read" list. With the community reads event quickly approaching, I moved this novel to the beginning of my list and immersed myself in the beautiful literature that Margaret Atwood produces.

The beginning of the book begins with a suicide. It opened with the main character experiencing the death of her sister, Laura. There was little thought from the character about losing a loved one or what her sister's intentions were in this suspicious scenario. Instead, both the character's thoughts and Atwood's selection of detail revolve around the unnamed main character's reputation and suspicions. The only information the reader is given about this character is her ties to her deceased sister. Despite this being our only link to the character, they purposely avoid the subject, focusing on the character's extravagant lifestyle. She references her husband to warn him to write a "statement of grief". 

Margaret Atwood does something unique with the format of her writing. The book opens with a narrative focused on this unnamed character. In the second chapter, the form changes to that of a  newspaper. It is a report on Laura's death, referencing her famous sister. The report itself focuses on Laura's sister without using her name. The main character is referred to as "Mrs. Richard E Griffen", using her husband's name instead of giving her a name. This character overwhelmingly holds the attention of the reader, but Atwood does everything in her power to keep the reader from knowing the identity of the focus of her novel.

The chapter following this introduces the "blind assassin". The chapter is labeled "The Blind Assassin: The hard-boiled egg. It is the dramatic telling of a story within a story that takes place outside of our galaxy. There is a battle for land that is claimed to be sacred by five different tribes. Each claims the land that an ancient battle took place and killed all that were in it. There is a pile of stones, but no lasting memory of what took place or what was before. No tribe knows the origin of the stones or who won the war, but each takes responsibility for holding it sacred and continuing traditions to honor who died there. The story continues in other forms of writing from there, each from different viewpoints and forms of media.

This story telling is a way of not revealing details too quickly. The reader becomes immersed in the feelings of a story and the author is able to withhold detail without boring the reader. The connections are difficult to find, but become clearer as the story continues. The main character is dealing with grief and finding solace inside herself to cope. She cannot focus on the death of her sister or how to grieve because she is forced to focus on her appearance and hide her true feelings. Even the reader is left in the dark of her own identity.