Product Description

"Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor." Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling victim? Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7248 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 545 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In 1843, a 16-year-old Canadian housemaid named Grace Marks was tried for the murder of her employer and his mistress. The sensationalistic trial made headlines throughout the world, and the jury delivered a guilty verdict. Yet opinion remained fiercely divided about Marks- -was she a spurned woman who had taken out her rage on two innocent victims, or was she an unwilling victim herself, caught up in a crime she was too young to understand? Such doubts persuaded the judges to commute her sentence to life imprisonment, and Marks spent the next 30 years in an assortment of jails and asylums, where she was often exhibited as a star attraction. In Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood reconstructs Marks's story in fictional form. Her portraits of 19th-century prison and asylum life are chilling in their detail. The author also introduces Dr Simon Jordan, who listens to the prisoner's tale with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief. In his effort to uncover the truth, Jordan uses the tools of the then rudimentary science of psychology. But the last word belongs to the book's narrator--Grace herself.

Independent on Sunday
'A sensuous, perplexing book, at once sinister and dignified, grubby and gorgeous, panoramic yet specific...'

Dublin Daily, March, 2003
A book that gets better with each read.

Customer Reviews

Fact to fiction
This is a very well written book. Atwood takes a double murder which is fact and writes fiction around it.It really held me. I actually got to like Grace, i wanted to learn more and more about her. It also leaves you not really knowing what to belive. Very good book.

Based on real life events
Based on the true story of Grace Marks who was the most infamous woman in Canada in the 1840's. Her and James McDermott were accused of murdering their male employer Mr Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper cum mistress Nancy Montgomery who was pregnant at the time. McDermott was said to have killed Mr Kinnear with a shotgun after earlier in the day the two of them strangled Nancy. Possible reasons were that McDermott was in love with Grace and Grace was in love with Mr Kinnear.

The tale picks up with Grace in jail sometime after McDermott has been hanged for his crimes. Grace was due to be hanged as well, but the sentence was changed to life due to the efforts of her lawyer Kenneth MacKenzie. It is told alternatively through Grace herself and Dr Simon Jordan who specialises in mental issues (Grace spent some time in an asylum but it was unclear whether she was truely insane or faking it). Dr Jordan is a young man trying to open his own asylum and adopts Grace as his new project that will hopefully give him the exposure he requires to get funding. The interest in her is that it was never proven just what her involvement was in the murder of Nancy and Mr Kinnear, she claims to have had a blackout and not remember anything for a couple of hours during the time Nancy was killed.

I absolutely loved this book. Grace was such an interesting character, you were never sure how much of what she was telling Dr Jordan was the truth. Atwood gives the impression that she was guilty, but it is never said outright. There are some interesting side characters like Dr Jordan's landlady and his mother who towards the end manages to get her own way, she is a very formidable opponent! I also spent a lot of time wondering whether Grace's friend Mary Witney was ever real or was Grace's original name and who the "J" from the apple core divination was that Grace would marry. Highly recommended to all Atwood, fiction and crime fans.

Alias Grace- Brillaint
A fantastic book, you dont know what to believe, with its tales of sex, murder and class conflict it is an excellent book and worth a read. I would highly recommend Alias Grace to anyone.