Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood

460 pp.

1996

First line: "Out of the gravel there are red peonies growing."

Background: On July 23, 1843, Mr. Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper/mistress Nancy Montgomery were murdered. The accused were fellow-servants Grace Marks and James McDermott. McDermott was hung for his part in the crimes. Marks was sentenced to death also, but her sentence was commuted to life.

Plot synopsis: In the novel, Dr. Simon Jordan, a young doctor from New England, is invited by a group of interested persons to interview Grace at Kingston Penitentiary in Canada to further a petition for her release. Grace claims to have no recollection of the murders, and Dr. Jordan hopes that by unlocking her memory he will make a name for himself in psychiatry and be able to raise the funds needed to open his own asylum. Simultaneously the story of Grace's childhood and early service and Dr. Jordan's stay in Kingston, the novel inches closer and closer to Grace's account of the fateful day. Is Grace a cold blooded murderess? Is she crazy? Is she innocent?

This is my third Atwood novel; I've also read some of her short stories. Atwood creates a very nuanced story. In addition to the main narrative, Atwood uses letters and dreams and excerpts from other accounts of the murders to enhance the story. My personal favorite is a ballad that is titled like a news report, and is an account of the murders and trial and events leading up to it. Here is an excerpt:

Grace Marks she stood up in the dock,
And she denied it all.
I did not see her strangled,
I did not hear him fall.

He forced me to accompany him,
He said if I did tell,
That with one shot of his trusty gun,
He's send me straight to H__l.

The novel is a sort of quilt, something Grace expresses a great deal of interest in. Grace includes descriptions of quilts that people owned in her narrative, discusses her favorite quilt patterns, and is often working on a quilt while talking to Dr. Jordan. Grace mentions that some quilts look different depending on whether you focus on the light or dark squares. The novel is like that.

Going back to the novel to write this review I noticed something in the first chapter that didn't seem to mesh with what I'd remembered from later in the book. I can't quite account for it and find myself rethinking everything I thought about Grace. Where before I was focusing on the light pieces, now I can see the dark (or vice versa)

More than being about Grace's guilt and sanity however (and why are these the options? who decides?), Atwood has written a clever commentary on the status of women and servants in the time and the roles available to them.

I give this book 4.25 stars. I don't know that I really want to get into advanced fractions, but that's what it is.