Margaret Atwood — The Blind Assassin

Bloomsbury Publishing 2000 Hardback, 548pp. 'Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge'. Laura Chase's older sister Iris, married at 18 to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and 82, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the First War. While coping with her unreliable body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of 'The Blind Assassin', a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following: as Iris says, she herself lives 'in the long shadow cast by Laura'. Sexually explicit for its time, 'The Blind Assassin' describes a risky affair in the turbulent 30s between a wealthy young woman and a man on the run. During their secret meetings in rented rooms, the lovers concoct a pulp fantasy set on Planet Zycron. As the invented story twists through love and sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real one; while events in both move closer to war and catastrophe. Heavy. DJ; previous owner's nameplate inside. (ISBN: 9780747549376). Good.