Reviewed by Renée Bosman, Government Information Librarian
"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." So begins The Blind Assassin, a story of two sisters, one of whom dies young, yet is still revered by devout fans of her posthumously-published novel. Laura Chase's sister Iris is left to live among the fallout caused by both Laura's death and the publication of her "scandalous" novel. The story presented to the reader is told by an elderly Iris, who shares a rather cynical and detached account of their childhood, her coerced marriage to an older husband, and the subsequent downfall of the once-prosperous Chase family. Iris's musings shift seamlessly between past and present, and interspersed among her story are excerpts from Laura's novel, The Blind Assassin. Atwood's novel-within-a-novel approach provides just enough clues to read between the lines of Iris's tale, leading the reader along at a measured pace to the ultimate "AHA!" moment of realization of what really happened during those years prior to Laura's death. When I finished this book, I put it down with a stunned "wow." The Blind Assassin won the 2000 Booker Prize.
