Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Based on actual murders in Ontario in 1843, Atwood spins a compelling yarn of the haves and havenots and what it meant to be an Irish immigrant in the early days of Canadian life.

As I read it all seemed so familiar and I realized I had seen the story reenacted on television and was pleased to find the book filled in a lot of seemingly insignificant yet vital details to the story.

Grace Marks, convicted and imprisoned for murder becomes a pet project for the locals where she is serving time and working for the governor. Is she a shrewd manipulator or a mentally ill woman suffering from multiple personality disorder? The answer is not so clear.

Housekeeper to Thomas Kinnear, Nancy Montgomery is murdered along with him. Their affair is no secret to anyone and her treatment of Grace and James McDermott, convicted of killing her, is mostly condescending and sometimes, cruel.

Jeremiah the Peddler is a master of disguises and changes names and personas on a regular basis. When he has a chance encounter with Grace decades after the murders, he agrees to hypnotize her and not let on that they knew each other many years before the infamous murders. Another con or the emergence of suppressed memories?

Dr. Simon Jordan is an American doctor hoping his interviews with Grace will reveal her lost memories with the goal of documenting his research to support opening his own clinic. Here again, it becomes unclear as to who is manipulating whom.

Quotes:

In a new country, friends become old friends very quickly.

for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.

The mind, he reflects, is like a house–thoughts which the owner no longer wishes to display, or those which arouse painful memories, are thrust out of sight, and consigned to attic or cellar; and in forgetting, as in the storage of broken furniture, there is surely an element of will at work.

Atwood is quite the raconteur and I’ve no doubt she’d be quite interesting. Such a prolific author would surely have tips I’d hope she would share, but if not, her company alone would be quite worth my time.

My rating for Alias Grace  is an 8 out of 10.

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Next up…Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters

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