"Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor."
Our second Book Group book has been Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace
I was impressed by the carefully detailed, astute writing, the book's controlled pace, the characterisation and the command with which everything is handled. Atwood gets completely under the skin of her main character (and others, too) and so Grace's telling of her story is both a very credible, plausible statement of the facts and a skillfully embroidered tale. There is a slyness to Grace which Atwood reveals occasionally and as if by accident, like a slip showing at the hem of a dress when a woman moves a certain way. Her attitude to Dr. Jordan gives us the hints we need here, e.g. "What should I tell him?....Some of it is all jumbled in my mind, but I could pick out this or that for him, some bits of whole cloth you might say, as when you go through the rag bag looking for something that will do, to supply a touch of colour".
I was interested in the recurring needlework theme (there is much to that which we can't go into here) and I loved the evocation of places and scenes on the basis of smells, while the humour was unexpected - Mrs. Jordan's letters contain some very funny throwaway lines. What I felt wasn't sufficiently stated was McDermott's motives for premeditated murder: he was to be let go, so if bitter might seek to get his own back by stealing from Kinnear or slandering him and Nancy perhaps, but planning to kill them both seemed extreme, and this of course fundamentally affects Grace's position.
My thanks to Donna for suggesting this book, the first of Margaret Atwood's novels I've read; I thought it was superb. What did you think? Please leave your comments on this post and come back tomorrow to find out what our next title will be.
