The Blind Assassin

Okay, so The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood is yet another book to talk about here. I hope you're excited, there's ever more to come.

I've had this page open for an hour at least, but I've been preoccupied with watching Kamen Rider. Clearly, I need to ease myself into this post.

While reading this book, there were a number of words that I was unsure of. I know I've looked up insouciant before, and I have a loose definition of plutocrat, but otherwise I think I'm striking at new ground here. So first up is a bunch of definitions care of dictionary.com.

Tonsure: Given the context, the book was using 3.the part of a cleric's head, usually the crown, left bare by shaving the hair.

Impecunious: having little or no money; penniless; poor.

Insouciant: free from concern, worry, or anxiety; carefree; nonchalant.

Gambol: to skip about, as in dancing or playing; frolic.

Abstemious: moderate or sparing, especially in the consumption of alcohol or food; temperate

Lugubrious: mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner

Plutocrat: a member of a plutocracy. (helpful, ain't it?)

Plutocracy: a group comprised of plutocrats (I'm kidding, here's the real answer) the rule or power of wealth or of the wealthy. (more straightforward than I expected, should have remembered it.)

And now I can throw out this paper that had all these words written on it.

*tossed* Wow, did I miss the garbage.

As for the novel itself (finally! Also, heavy spoilers.) I quite enjoyed it. It's written as the autobiography of an old woman, Iris, to her grand-daughter who may not ever come back to read it. Very Watchmen. The biography contains excerpts of an in-universe fictional novel "The Blind Assassin" which is itself the story of a torrid, pulpy love affair between a woman and a man on the run for his communist sympathies. The man makes some cash for himself by telling the story of the eponymous Blind Assassin.

Yo, I heard you liked novels in your novels, so I put a novel inside your novels novel. Novel-ception!

Yes, yes, I do like that. So point in the novels favour.

Not that it needs my approval, the thing got accolades galore when it showed up on the scene in 2000. So who am I to criticize?

Well, I'll criticize anyway, it's my blog.

The structure of the novel, or rather the "autobiography", is such that it runs against the grain of the character-that-is-author, Iris. We're told her story, we know her education, and I don't really believe that woman could write this novel. She's a straightforward, practical person, but hardly poetical. How then to account for the poetical style of the prose, its similes running throughout? I believe Margaret Atwood would write thusly, but not the character of Iris.

The big mystery at the heart of the book, why did Iris's sister Laura commit suicide, isn't revealed until the very end. Which makes sense enough for a novel, to keep the height of the action for the ending, but it doesn't make sense for what is essentially a letter to a grand daughter. Just say what you need to say! Your roundabout way of telling this story, it would sound like you were just stringing me along, were it made for me. A cruel little prank from beyond the grave.

Interestingly, this apparent disconnect between the supposed writer and the content of the book is used in the novel to illustrate why Laura isn't the author of The Blind Assassin. It had been asserted that this fictional novel had been written by this young woman Laura, it was published under her name after her death, but as time goes by and we learn more about Laura and Iris, Laura has little oppourtunity or temperment for novel writing. That's the twist, that Laura as the author of Blind Assassin was a lie, and that it was Iris herself that had created the thing. Iris even tells us immediately before she reveals this information that we should have figured this out already.

I just doubt the ability of either girl to write anything of renown. Another example of the tricky business of setting up a work in-universe that causes a splash, which upon examination doesn't really hold up to that idea. It's like the fictional universe we're reading about is populated by people with a different set of standards for genius.

Ah, but then again, it IS rather weird what becomes famous and much loved in this world. Rather hard to predict, what?

The book was 500 pages. Focus the book, make it three hundred pages (if you absolutely MUST make it that long), and maybe tweak Iris such that I'd believe her more as an author, and the book would be set for me. But yes, it doesn't have to be set for me at all.

Oh, I almost forgot another new thing I learned! The fictional novel "The Blind Assassin" contained within the actual novel The Blind Assassin is an example of a roman à clef, or rather, a fictional version of a roman à clef, which is when "a novel about real life (is) overlaid with a façade of fiction". For this novel, that means that certain truths were revealed to the public via the publication of "The Blind Assassin" that set other things in motion, the death of Iris's husband, the distrust betwen Iris and her daughter, and other things that I probably can't think of at the moment.

So yeah. "Roman à clef". French for "novel with a key". According to wikipedia.