written by: Margaret Atwood

first published: Anchor Books, 2001

Margaret Atwood begins her Booker Prize-winning novel with a hook: “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” Like Joe Gillis floating dead in Norma Desmond’s pool in the opening scene of “Sunset Boulevard,” the story begins with the end. And with Laura’s own end as a foregone conclusion, readers are left picking out the hows and whys of her demise.

The story takes place in Ontario and is told through the recollections of Iris Chase Griffen, daughter in a prominent manufacturing family that sees its fortunes rise and fall through the great wars of the early 20th century. Iris and her younger sister Laura are raised in the fictional town of Port Ticonderoga, and it is always expected that the practical Iris will look out for the fragile Laura. When union strikes threaten the operation of their factories and violence erupts among workers and outside agitators, the fortunes of the Chases take a downward turn. Iris does what’s best for her failing family, dutifully signing up for a loveless marriage to rival manufacturing magnate Richard Griffen.

The narrative of “The Blind Assassin” is neither linear nor singular, making it a bit of a puzzle to determine what really happened. It begins with Laura’s end, moves forward to an older Iris living without any discernible family in Port Ticonderoga, and then steps back into Iris and Laura’s childhood at Avilion, the family estate. The novel unfolds through Iris’s first-person narrative, a series of newspaper clippings, and Laura’s posthumously published novel, also called “The Blind Assassin.” Laura’s book is a planet-jumping science fiction story about a woman exposed to new worlds through secret meet-ups with an illicit lover. Renowned as one of the great modernist novelists, Laura’s celebrity and tragedy continue to draw visitors to her gravesite and fan letters to Iris decades after her death.  

But while the story and structure of “The Blind Assassin” are important, they’re not what make the novel great. The greatness is found in the lyrical precision of Atwood’s language and her tendency to deploy weighty truisms throughout the book. One is just as likely to find a profound observation on life in a passage about donuts (and Iris does like her donuts) as in the more significant events of the narrative.  

Take this passage, for example, from the novel-within-the-novel, describing a woman’s hair: “It’s too blonde. It stands out. Blondes are like white mice, you only find them in cages. They wouldn’t last long in nature. They’re too conspicuous.” It’s not too difficult to imagine Humphrey Bogart delivering this line about his girl’s hair.

Or take this quote: “All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.”

The character elaborates. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves, being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. There’s running with the wolf pack, turning into a wolf or, best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist, he argues.

With gorgeous prose and wry observations, Atwood constructs an epic family struggle that spans a century and lays the foundation for the world we now live in. The various narratives bind closer together throughout the reading. Details introduced in Iris’s story make their way into Laura’s novel, and the newspaper accounts are not so much a portrayal in accuracy as a public story of record concocted by the Chases and Griffens. Atwood carefully emphasizes the power of the written word to craft and subterfuge the public personalities of the novel, making the intention of Laura’s book that much more intriguing. 

“The Blind Assassin” is a book that deepens with multiple readings. Tiny clues about Laura’s state of mind, Iris’s motivations and what really happened to the Chase girls are skillfully deployed throughout the book and only become meaningful in the context of the later narrative. 

Which brings us back to the opening line. Does the fact that Laura’s death is revealed in the first sentence give anything away? Her storyline is defined by her death, but not lessened. Rather, it powerfully illustrates that the stories we tell about ourselves almost always begin where we want them to end.

“The Blind Assassin” was chosen as The Atlantic Monthly’s first Twitter book club selection for the month of June. While they’ve moved on to more beachy reading for July, you can still review the archived reader discussions on the book and read Atwood’s Q&A on Twitter.