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: #13216 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 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

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

Customer Reviews

A totally modern story in a historical setting
A complete classic, "Alias Grace" works on many levels and weaves together tones and themes to compelling effect.

Against the real life backdrop of the case of Grace Marks, a servant girl accused of murder in 1800s Canada, Atwood has created truly believeable characters and events.

"Alias Grace" tells the story of Grace through the guise of her recounting her life to a "new fangled" psychiatrist who has been sent to study her. Grace's story is intermingled with her private thoughts (perhaps revealing her own agenda), along with the perspective of those in society who are fascinated and sometimes repulsed by her.

Partly a "who-dun-it", the book also works on other levels. Atwood perfectly exposes the hypocrisy and prejudices operating in society at that time, by letting each character reveal their own motivations.

There are subtle sub-plots around the book's minor characters ; Atwood being the writer that she is, the novel has frequent feminist undertones ; the book is in part psychological study, and there are also some real questions raised within the novel that force readers to draw their own conclusions.

Please forget any preconceptions that you may have about Atwood as a writer, or the historical genre. If you have any interest in people and how they interact - or if you simply enjoy a well written novel - I promise that you will enjoy "Alias Grace".

A great contemporary 19th Century Novel
Loved this.'Alias Grace' takes a true murder incident in Canada in the last century and combines genuine research with fictional supposition. As in all such books you want to know the truth, but more than most you trust the author. Broadly you can see where fact and fiction separate, and you feel integrity in the way Atwood has gone about the task. The book is particularly brilliant in capturing the detail of life in the 1840s: what they ate and cooked, hygiene, cleanliness, transport and so on. The chapter describing the horrors of crossing the Atlantic in an emigration ship from Ireland is superb. And the characters are entirely credible as well - Grace now recalling her past with apparent honesty but also a degree of sub conscious suppression. Suppression - particularly of sexuality - is one of the great themes of the book. And, as so often ('Middlemarch', 'French Lieutenant's Woman') it features that key character - the ambitious, clever Victorian young man - a doctor here (Simon Jordan) as in Middlemarch - facing a sea of troubles and doubts. He sets out to improve the world and push the boundaries of knowledge, but is challenged by frustration and by his own confused feelings and sexuality focused on a woman who gets cast as a femme fatale. Because in the world presented here, if women are not servants or wives that is all they can be.

Powerful and Beautiful
Working from a fascinating historical incident, the murder of an emigrant Scotsman in Victorian Canada, Margaret Atwood has crafted an enigmatic andenduring anti-heroine.
I add my voice to a chorus of praise forAtwood's writing. Her prose is crystaline in its precision and clarity. A dark, almost macabre tale is illuminated with flashes of humour andstriking symbolism.
Grace, a serving girl imprisoned (rightly or wrongly?) for the murder,emerges as an elusive yet fully flesh-and-blood character. Grace narrates the story, at once bringing us into intimate contact with her thoughts and shrouding the mystery of her actions. This is a device used in books like 'Rebecca' and 'The Turn of the Screw'; but here it's fresh and riveting. Grace seems simultaneously bewildered by, and in control of, her reputation as a murderess. It's this allure which brings Dr Simon Jordon to her prison, seeking to understand her psychology. The charged interviews between the two are especially powerful.
Just as her characters are strong, the writer creates a landscape in the mind which is fully alive and three-dimensional.
If I've dwelt on the novel's literary aspects, don't be put off. I enjoyed this book tremendously, and recommend it whole-heartedly.