Book Discussion Group
February 08, 2012 - February 08, 2012 [Wed.]
Central Library @ 9:15 am (Friends Meeting Room)  February 8, 2012
Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood
In what critics call “sheer storytelling bravado,” Atwood adroitly juggles three plot lines in a novel that opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.
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