"I wonder which is better - when you go through life swollen from their own secrets, until you burst, and when you give it out to suck, every paragraph, every sentence every word, until finally you will be deprived of everything that once was as precious as gold stocks - all that was most important, everything you want to protect and hide everything that belonged to you - and spend the rest of life as an empty bag in the wind łopoczący , marked with bright, fluorescent label, so everyone knew what kryłaś secrets? " - by Iris Chase, the heroine-narrator," Blind assassin. "For this book, Margaret Atwood received the Booker Prize in 2000. No wonder - the novel is excellent.
I read
it hesitantly, with growing amazement, finishing with admiration - but do not know if I succeed in love with Iris, I had to meet her. Probably not even have thought that living in the province this old lady, at the moment congruent, moving unsteadily, giving all the critical look, may hide a secret, be nice, clever - or moving? Mired in troubles of his body, and therefore insensitive, nor has anything anyone else but me is not interesting - so I probably thought about it. I know awaits me the same thing. Maybe someday also say: "I barely saw. For them, I had to look odd, but I suppose that such is the fate of old, that young people consider them freaks." In the end we all begin to act or look strange (or at least odd). However, not all of the disasters of our lives we will be able to make a fascinating story. Not everyone will want to admit our mistakes, to reveal our secrets.
Even harder to lift probably would be friends with his sister Iris, Laura, whose suicide opens the book, is the starting point - but the handle. This exalted teenager seeking attention and care, not respecting others' property borders or, frankly irritated me from the start - its exaggerated spirituality, insight and goodness, which outside groups rather not been seen, especially that the book he wrote, became the first scandal, then the object of worship, and that this book (also titled "The Blind Assassin" and operating on the Rights of the "novel in the novel") with groszowego romance turns into a modern fable of Scheherazade, is developing in an increasingly improbable directions, attracts attention and does not let go.
From these two intertwining story preferred to first log - Iris confession before death, because using the story cliches torn from before the Great Depression, he showed something personal, and - strange. History of the family fortune Chase'ów, years of glory and decline probably reflects the transformation of the Canadian bourgeoisie, based on the reasons for its sympathy for the Communists and conservative politicians. But you need Atwood black humor to make heroes of the manufacturers of buttons, reaching up to real money by the war (which guzikarskiego industry is good, because so many buttons on it dies - the entire body at once - and must be immediately replaced with new ones). The money the family will become a burden for Iris, the reason for the incapacitated: to save a fortune, you will fulfill the expectations of others, unable to identify their own needs and values. It will be, and as such has become the ideal wife of conservative politics. But that still take away into the shadows, will meet the other, somehow justify it? Is protecting his family actually shielded her? Do you prefer to remain both invisible and blind?
Memory Iris is deadly accurate: contemplating suicide, Laura, gradually revealing all the circumstances that led to it, on an equal footing notes "a lot of clothes, styles and colors that are already out of fashion, shriveled wings like a butterfly. A lot of dinner, not always delicious. breakfast, picnics, travel, ocean, costume balls, newspapers, boating. " Atwood adds to the dreams and snippets from contemporary newspapers, social chronicles, and all this together for more than six sides of the story perfectly mixed.
So if you want, you can read an epic story of a time of crisis. If you are patient - a psychological mystery crime. Futuristic tale. A story about relationships between women. Treaty on the search for identity. Lecture about being a writer, a reflection of women's writing. Surprising journal. The story of that love and truth tend to be blind. Read necessarily.
