She's a lady

I've managed to read the more than 500 pages long The Blind Assassin within about a week, if I'm not mistaken. And here comes my assessment of it. I'm not gonna do any research on the author (Margaret Atwood), consequently I won't give any intro. Let it be enough that she's Canadian, has published prose, drama, as well as poetry (which I don't know yet). The novel came out in 2000.

I don't know how you feel about it but I like the kind of narration when there is a framing story, i.e. an elderly person (preferably a woman) who looks back on her life, especially on an important part of it. If you remember it, that's what happened in The Evening and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In both films, one side of the story was the love of their life. This is the frame of The Blind Assassin as well. What I like in this structure is that we see the same story from different angles, one is the way the person lived through it and the other is retrospective, that is, the interpretation of the older, wiser self. This is certainly a cliché but it can be done genuinely.
I myself am really interested in aging and remembering one's life, though as I so frequently emphasize I'm (only) 24. When I was younger, it was a major problem for me that if I became famous and a film was made about my life, someone else would play me. And I found it really upsetting. I think it questions the integrity of a person's identity. Besides, every other person would be next best compared to the real thing. As a solution I wished that I could video my whole life, so afterwords when the crew is making my film, they'd just have to select the relevant parts. Of course the whole thing is stupid (and quite egocentric) but my main concern was that it would take a lifetime to watch my life; therefore it would be a difficult (and even boring) task and probably the crew would hate me after a while. Another stupid self-indulgent idea of mine was that I used to think what would happen if I died at the instant. Would I be happy? Have I finished everything important for the day? This fear rose either when I had a quarrel with someone important, e.g. my boyfriend or my sister, or when walking home at night. Luckily as yet no-one has found me worth taking the trouble of attacking on the street. Plus I also concluded that God won't let me die at a time when I have something important to handle; consequently I always try to leave something for tomorrow, e.g. teaching someone the present perfect properly. (Not that I am irreplaceable in this respect.) One thing that also troubled me in connection to this is the problem of my e-mail accounts and network memberships. How would my relatives find out my password and let my correspondences know about my death? Actually, this can be really embarrassing. One of my friends has died at an early age but on his birthday the social network site always shows his age and suggest that I send my best regards. Bizarre.

Okay, so much of my paranoid egocentric concerns (not that there's no more). The protagonist-narrator of The Blind Assassin is Iris Griffen, who is I think in her eighties but I can't remember the exact age. She was born in 1916 according to the story, so maybe she's 83 or 84 at the time of writing. In a way, the story is of her sister, Laura, who committed suicide in 1945. We know this right from the beginning. I assume that's why on the cover it is said that there's romantic suspense in the novel. Nevertheless, the story is quite intriguing throughout. There are three kinds of text in it: Iris's memoirs/memories, newspaper articles, and the chapters of Laura's posthumus novel, The Blind Assassin. And all these are arranged in a somewhat mixed order. The newspaper articles often foretell an event that is going to be explained by Iris much later. The chapters of the novel within the novel are presented in the right order but stretched through the book, interrupted by Iris's accounts on the past or often about her present state.
Thus, the main characters are Iris and Laura but we get to know the rise and fall of the family as well, since these events were crucial in shaping their lives. Their grandfather, Benjamin Chase had established a button factory, which flourished during WWI. He had a sophisticated wife, Adelia and three sons. But of course the war left its imprint on the family, then later the Depression, and so on.
The embedded novel also has two plots. There are two lovers, designated as a he and a she, who meet in dingy hotel rooms and inbetween their intercourses are telling, actually making a story. Their story is a kind of fantasy but the setting is similar to ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. There are tyrants, victimized virgins, child labour, intrigue, and of course the blind assassin. I really liked this subplot, which of course symbolizes the modern world and the situation of the two lovers as well. In the novel it is mostly invented by the guy but sometimes the girl also provides some ideas. Here again, there is suspension, because before we can read the actual chapters o this embedded novel, we are informed that it caused a scandal after its publication but in the real time of the old Iris it was acknowledged by book prizes etc.
I don't want to spoil the story, so just a few more hints as to why I liked it. Firstly, I liked the structure, as mentioned above. I also liked old Iris's humor, which often manifests itself as self-irony. Laura's character is also interesting in a way. She's a bit childish and naive, for example she asks stupid questions and takes proverbs literally, in a word, she's a weirdo, and that's why she's interesting. In addition, I also like the era the story deals with, namely the first few decades of the twentieth century. So much grandeur. Parties, chandeliers, gentlemen. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the language, which is highly poetic throughout the book. It is full of nice long adjectives I've never heard before. Nevertheless, I managed to understand it more or less.
I think if you feel just like me and are interested in this memoir style of narration and grandeur and female lives you should read it.

P.S. As I was looking for the images I found out that there's a film version as well.

(Picture above by Sacha Goldberg, from here)