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: #15950 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-01
• Original language: English
• 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.

Review
'A sensuous, perplexing book, at once sinister and dignified, grubby and gorgeous, panoramic yet specific...I don't think I have ever been so thrilled...This, surely is as far as a novel can go' Julie Myerson, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 'Brilliant...Atwood's prose is searching. So intimate it seems to be written on the skin' Hilary Mantel 'Margaret Atwood is to be congratulated' Anita Brookner, SPECTATOR 'The outstanding novelist of our age' Peter Kemp, SUNDAY TIMES 'Oh brilliant! I cannot rave enough...with its explosive mixture of sex, murder and class conflict, ALIAS GRACE is an absolute winner' Val Hennessey, DAILY MAIL 'One of the best modern novels I've come acrosss...written with such compelling intimacy that at times it is hard not to feel one is reading a memoir written exclusively for oneself.' THE WEEK '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.' AMAZON.CO.UK

Margaret Atwood's compelling novel is based on the true story of one of Canada's most notorious 19th-century murders. A poor servant girl, Grace Marks, just 16 at the time, was jointly accused of the murder of her master, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery, who were living in a thinly-disguised common-law marriage. Her co-accused James McDermott, another servant, was widely assumed to be her lover, but their true motive for the killings was endlessly speculated on and never discovered. 'It is not the culprits that need to be forgiven; rather it is the victims, because they are the ones who cause all the trouble.' This is Grace's conclusion. Her dry wit and often biblical turn of phrase sharply flavour this novel, which looks with intelligent amusement and a good historical sense at the clashes of id and superego, the need for order and rationality versus the yearning for drama and mystery. The story unfolds as a kind of detective story. The self-possessed Grace is an enigmatic challenge to the young neurologist who hopes to lift her partial amnesia and make his name. It is to him that she tells her story, which, from her short and wretched Irish-immigrant childhood to her abortive escape from rural Canada with the killer, shows the stays of women's lives pulled tight. Her subsequent long years of reflection have resulted in a deep cynicism combined with the innocence of one who has spent all her adult life locked away. Almost gleefully, Atwood raises awkward questions: What is buried in the cellar? Who is listening at the door? And is the voice speaking through us always our own? In an interesting subtext the excerpts from contemporary newspaper reports introduce each chapter and the treatment Grace Marks received at the hands of the press makes particularly salutary reading in the light of modern tabloid reporting. (Kirkus UK)

A fascinating elaboration - and somewhat of a departure for Atwood (The Robber Bride, 1993, etc.) - of the life of Grace Marks, one of Canada's more infamous killers. As notorious as our own Lizzy Borden, Grace Marks was barely 16 when she and James McDermott were arrested in 1843 for the brutal murder of their employer Thomas Kinnear and his pregnant mistress/housekeeper Nancy Montgomery. The trial was a titillating sensation; McDermott was hanged, and Grace was given the dubious mercy of life imprisonment. Some felt her an innocent dupe, others thought her a cold-blooded murderer; the truth remains elusive. Atwood reimagines Grace's story, and with delicate skill all but replaces history with her chronicle of events. Anchoring the narrative is the arrival of Dr. Simon Jordan, who has come to investigate the sanity of Grace after some 16 years of incarceration. A convert to the new field of psychiatry, Jordan is hoping to help Grace recover her memory of the murders, which she claims no recollection of. He begins by asking for her life story. Grace tells him of her first commission as a laundry maid in a grand house, and of her dear friend Mary, dead at 16 from a botched abortion. On she goes until she calmly relates the events that led up to the murders, and her attempted escape with McDermott afterward. Hypnotism finally "restores" her memory (or is Grace misleading Jordan?), with results that are both shocking and ambiguous. Employing a variety of narratives - Grace's own, Dr. Jordan's, letters, newspaper accounts from the time, poems from the period, and the published confessions of the accused - a complex story is pieced together. The image of the patchwork quilt, used repeatedly in the novel, is a fitting metaphor for the multiplicity of truths that Grace exemplifies. Through characteristically elegant prose and a mix of narrative techniques, Atwood not only crafts an eerie, unsettling tale of murder and obsession, but also a stunning portrait of the lives of women in another time. (Kirkus Reviews)

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.