The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood

Continuing on my plan to expand the types of books I’m reading: this was from Annabel several years ago. A Booker prize winner, and I’ve enjoyed some of the others I’ve read, it’s also Canadian and a female author. I just haven’t been reading enough female authors recently; though Zadie Smith is one of my favourite authors.

It’s an interesting story for a number of reasons. It’s structured as a story within a story within a story; it’s told backwards and forwards, alternatively; it appears to be centred around a mystery, but really isn’t; and, perhaps most interestingly, for a large part of the novel the main character is quite unsympathetic. And though unsympathetic, she still manages to maintain your influence and carry the story.

And stopping for a pause… when I first wrote this review immediately after reading the book over a month ago, I enjoyed the novel but wasn’t taken by it. However, it’s a novel I haven’t stopped thinking about. It just keeps cropping up in my mind over and over again. At the time, I put it down as one of those typical, slightly over-wrought Booker prize winners, but now my opinion is going to have to change.

Slow, deliberate, difficult for not liking the main character, but in the end, memorable and worth it. I will be going back to read more Atwood: and I’ve found myself browsing her shelf in book stores.