Alias Grace: A Novel

by Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace: A Novel

published

October 13th 1997 (first published 2005) by Anchor

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binding

Paperback, 480 pages

literary awards

Scotiaback Giller Prize (1996); Booker Prize Nominee (1996); IMPAC Dublin Award Nominee (1998); Orange Prize Nominee (1997)

isbn

0385490445 (isbn13: 9780385490443)

description

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 ma...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 6091)

All ratings | 5 stars (1287) | 4 stars (2145) | 3 stars (1254) | 2 stars (220) | 1 star (42) | avg 3.92

all | this edition

Jessica

Jessica rated it:

07/26/07

bookshelves: modern-fiction

Read in January, 2006

Okay. My beef with Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace? It was a technically impressive novel - very impressive. Her skill with narrative voice as well as her unique framing device (the different kinds of quilts, their names ["Hearts and Gizzards," "Tree of Paradise," "Falling Timbers":] being relevant to the content of their section) were both wonderful. But she withholds important information like Agatha Christie. Oh, so Grace Marks had MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES? Ma...more

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Madeline

Madeline rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

09/15/08

bookshelves: history, the-list

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I'm giving this three stars, but the correct rating would be 2 1/2 stars - I liked this book, for the most part, but there were just too many unanswered questions and minor annoyances for me to want to read it again.
Usually, I hate giving away the endings of books in my reviews, but I honestly cannot talk about Alias Grace without giving away major plot points. You've been warned.

So: for the most part, this was a cool story, mostly b...more I'm giving this three stars, but the correct rating would be 2 1/2 stars - I liked this book, for the most part, but there were just too many unanswered questions and minor annoyances for me to want to read it again.
Usually, I hate giving away the endings of books in my reviews, but I honestly cannot talk about Alias Grace without giving away major plot points. You've been warned.

So: for the most part, this was a cool story, mostly because it's based on the true story of Grace Marks, who supposedly helped murder her employer and his housekeeper. She served thirty years in prison, plus several years in a mental institution. Atwood's story has two perspectives: Grace Marks and Simon Jordan, a doctor who's interviewing her and basically trying to get her to remember the day of the murders. This was all pretty cool, and I liked Grace a lot as a protagonist. So let's move on to the negative.
Stuff I Didn't Like:
-Simon creeped me out. One minute he's half-heartedly flirting with the daughter of the prison Govenor while mentally undressing her, and then he's screwing his landlady for reasons that even he doesn't understand. And then towards the end of the book he's suddenly like, "Oh wait! I'm in love with Grace! Yes! Totally in love" and it made NO SENSE. This was the first time I'd read a book where Atwood writes from a man's perspective, and it did not go well.
-I guessed the ending. This is an extremely bad sign, because I can NEVER guess book endings, ever. But with this book, I'd gotten to the part where Grace describes how McDermott told her she'd promised to sleep with him, and she was like, "I did not" and I thought, "She's being possessed by the spirit of Mary Whitney." And then I thought that it had to be more complicated than that, and that there would be a scientific explanation for it. But there wasn't. Which brings me to my next point...
-Atwood's half-hearted commitment to the paranormal aspect of the story. The hypnosis scene revealed that Mary was possessing Grace, but then everyone was like, "But that's not possible, there's a psychological explanation" but they never gave one. All the elements of a good ghost story are here: the peddlar who reads palms, divination with an apple peel, people making strange, random prophesies (like Grace's mother saying she wouldn't survive the voyage, and Mary telling Grace she'd cross water three times before getting married), and the bizarre possession. But Atwood, probably because she didn't want to lose her credibility or something, refrains from going all-out with the paranormal events. If she'd have relaxed a bit and written the book as a ghost story instead of historic fiction, it would have been really good.
-The whole hypnosis. I was sure it was all an act, because Jeremiah had been telling Grace earlier about setting up a fake spiritualist act, but then Grace didn't seem to remember anything about the hypnosis or what she said during it. So could Jeremiah actually hypnotize people? After the hypnosis scene, and as soon as I realized I was expected to believe that it had been authentic, was when my faith in the story really started to drop. It was all downhill from there.
-No twist ending. I was waiting, up until the last page, for Grace to be like, "I'm so glad I killed those two bastards. Mwahahahaha! The end." But no such luck. In retrospect, I should have known better - Atwood hates giving readers a straight answer to anything, and conclusive endings where everything gets wrapped up in a neat little package is for lesser authors, I guess.
...less

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Mary

Mary rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

02/23/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

I've never been really keen on female authors - which is pretty obvious if you look back over my reading history - but I had Atwood recommended to me by several friends, so I picked up this book with the intention of giving it a whirl. I'd heard good things about The Handmaid's Tale but I didn't want to start with that one. It felt kind of like a cop-out.

Alias Grace was the most interesting sounding at the bookstore, so I picked it up and it grabbed me immediately. It's so b...more

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Lori

Lori rated it:

(review of isbn 0385475713)

08/30/07

bookshelves: 2007august

Read in August, 2007

I loved this book.

Right up until I didn't.

Atwood creates such compelling characters, and Grace Marks was no exception. I was curious (did she commit murder?), compassionate (boy, her life sucked) and drawn in (the tale bit by bit enthralled me). I couldn't make the pieces fit, which was just what I wanted.

For about 450 pages.

And then it all unravels. I knew she'd have to give the readers an answer as to what really happened, even though we'd been spoonfed info tiny bit by bit. Th...more

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Velcro

Velcro rated it:

11/20/07

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Lizzie Borden

Similar to Testimony Of An Irish Slave Girl, but instead of being framed by the prejudiced perspective of an interrogator who questions the prisoner, we read the first-person viewpoint of the prisoner herself. Here the drama lies in the way Atwood uncovers layers of suspicion and reveals the tragic details of a life spent deceiving the masters - employers, jailers, and doctors, all - in order to live a life; whereas with McCafferty's novel -even with the extended passages of first-person testim...more Similar to Testimony Of An Irish Slave Girl, but instead of being framed by the prejudiced perspective of an interrogator who questions the prisoner, we read the first-person viewpoint of the prisoner herself. Here the drama lies in the way Atwood uncovers layers of suspicion and reveals the tragic details of a life spent deceiving the masters - employers, jailers, and doctors, all - in order to live a life; whereas with McCafferty's novel -even with the extended passages of first-person testimony - the narrative tension is counterbalanced by the drama of how a biased man begins to loosen his intolerance and see the servant as a woman.

Atwood's approach leaves much more room for us readers to enter as participants who identify both with the strengths and foibles of the character, rather than sit in judgment of one with whom we may or may not share certain traits, but of whom we're always aware of how we're supposed to feel. By virtue of his position as a white man taking the testimony of the slave woman, the interlocutor character in McCafferty's book becomes an unreliable narrator; Grace, the protagonist of Atwood's novel, is also unreliable, but the difference is that her task is not to evaluate others, but to avoid evaluation herself.

Such a playful framing also gives Atwood room to introduce extra-literary devices such as songs, drawings, and newspaper clippings into the text. Along the way, of course, she does switch perspectives, which becomes part of the fun.

Oh, and it gets better and better. Of course I shouldn't have expected Atwood to stay in one place - she does delve deep into the mind of the interrogator character, with a very close 3rd person POV that she contrasts with the the distant and formal airs of excerpted letters from him to other officials. Her title character, Grace, retains the primary role, with an irreverent 1st person narrative that (if I'm not mistaken) stays in the present tense. All in all, this combination adds to the playful and yet serious tone - or the serious and yet playful one, as the case may be.

Atwood is so extraordinary at making such distinctions as humor-in-tragedy vs. tragedy-in-humor - which may not seem so delicate a divide when stated so plainly, but in deed informs the psychological demands each protagonist asks of one another. By virtue of the clear breaks between chapters and subtle surprise that suspends across them, we readers are allowed to decide just how willing we will be: how much credit to give to each account, especially because Atwood has left so much room for variation that we can take a joke for a serious jibe - or contemplative rumination for buffoonery, as it pleases us.

...less

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Summer

Summer rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

05/02/08

bookshelves: 2008, i-will-lend-this-to-you, novels

Like with any well-written book, I notice new things every time I reread a Margaret Atwood novel. This time, I was struck by the way things happened in threes: the deaths of three mother figures, three iconic sheets, three dresses, three "suitors" at the farm, three sides to Grace's personality. Is it confirmation bias? Or is Atwood playing around with a number that has a lot of literary and pseudomystical background?

Anyway, this book is great in that it has several levels of narra...more

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Wfbcreeds

Wfbcreeds rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

11/02/08

From Publishers Weekly
Intrigued by contemporary reports of a sensational murder trial in 1843 Canada, Atwood has drawn a compelling portrait of what might have been. Her protagonist, the real life Grace Marks, is an enigma. Convicted at age 16 of the murder of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper and lover, Nancy Montgomery, Grace escaped the gallows when her sentence was commuted to life in prison, but she also spent some years in an insane asylum after an emotional breakdown. Be...more From Publishers Weekly
Intrigued by contemporary reports of a sensational murder trial in 1843 Canada, Atwood has drawn a compelling portrait of what might have been. Her protagonist, the real life Grace Marks, is an enigma. Convicted at age 16 of the murder of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper and lover, Nancy Montgomery, Grace escaped the gallows when her sentence was commuted to life in prison, but she also spent some years in an insane asylum after an emotional breakdown. Because she gave three different accounts of the killings, and because she was accused of being the sole perpetrator by the man who was hanged for the crime, Grace's life and mind are fertile territory for Atwood. Adapting her style to the period she describes, she has written a typical Victorian novel, leisurely in exposition, copiously detailed and crowded with subtly drawn characters who speak the embroidered, pietistic language of the time. She has created a probing psychological portrait of a working-class woman victimized by society because of her poverty, and victimized again by the judicial and prison systems. The narrative gains texture and tension from the dynamic between Grace and an interlocutor, earnest young bachelor Dr. Simon Jordan, who is investigating the causes of lunacy with plans to establish his own, more enlightened institution. Jordan is hoping to awaken Grace's suppressed memories of the day of the murder, but Grace, though uneducated, is far wilier than Jordan, whom she tells only what she wishes to confess. He, on the other hand, is handicapped by his compassion, which makes him the victim of the wiles of other women, too: his passionate, desperate landlady, and the virginal but predatory daughter of the prison governor. These encounters give Atwood the chance to describe the war between the sexes with her usual wit. Although the narrative holds several big surprises, the central question: Was Grace dupe and victim or seductress and instigator of the bloody crime, is left tantalizingly ambiguous....less

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Diane

Diane rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

04/22/08

bookshelves: teaching

Read in March, 2008

Have read this book four times over 15 years ... just taught it to a first-year English class (theme: Youth and Adolescence) and by and large they loved it! They rose to the challenge of the nonlinear narrative structure and really got caught up in the issues of early psyhological practices and the question of consequences for youthful actions.

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Lindsay

Lindsay rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

10/01/08

bookshelves: historical-fiction, margaret-atwood

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: Atwood fans, fans of novels set in the Victorian period

This is a fictionalized account of the life of Grace Marks, a maid convicted of the murder of her employer and another maid in 1843.

Those familiar with Atwood's other writing will recognize some tropes: there's the Elusive Woman (here, the title character, whose mental status and degree of self-awareness are often ambiguous), and there's the fraught, ambivalent relationships between women. Like several of Atwood's other ...more

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Tomw

Tomw added it (review of isbn 3442723434)

08/30/08

bookshelves: i-have-read-this

Read in August, 2008

Her style is smooth and literate. The subject matter is mysterious and insane. This novel interweaves poor lives, evil thoughts and ghosts of memory. Tom

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Sandie

Sandie rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

11/11/08

recommends it for: Readers of well written Historical fiction

Alias Grace was in some ways reminiscent of another novel, Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue. Both are fictionalized versions of individuals from poor circumstances convicted of murdering their employers. The similarity ends there. While Donoghue's tome is entertaining, it does not possess the energy, masterful storytelling technique or intimate understanding of human behaviour of Margaret Atwoods novel, which fills your senses like a box of rich chocolates. Throughout the read you ask yourself, "...more

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Jo-Ann

Jo-Ann rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

09/23/08

Read in September, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Ryan Mishap

Ryan rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

11/09/08

bookshelves: novel

Read in January, 1999

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Kerri

Kerri rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

07/16/08

Read in July, 2008

This boos sat in my "to be read" pile for several years. I was a bit put off by Atwood's picture on the back and no one had ever recommended that it's a must read, so there it sat. This summer, however, I decided to charge through the "to be read" pile, starting alphabetically.
I can not express how pleased I was (and pleasantly surprised) by Atwood's writing style. Certainly, the subject of the book carries it--a murderess named Grace who is finally given a voice that histo...more

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Zeina

Zeina rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

07/23/08

Read in July, 2008

Wow. A really fascinating tale that keeps you guessing.
Alias Grace is the fictionalized true story of Grace Marks, an Irish immigrant in the 19th century who was accused and convicted of killing her employer and his mistress/housekeeper with the help of villain James McDermott.
But instead of hanging, she serves a life sentence in a prison, where she's on some kind of work release (working for the governor - of the prison, it is to be assumed).
Margaret Atwood imagines Grace's thoughts and ...more

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Mrs. Miska

Mrs. Miska rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

06/29/08

Read in June, 2008

Best described as historical fiction, Alias Grace is an account of the life of alleged Canadian murderess Grace Marks, convicted in 1843 at sixteen and pardoned in 1872. In her afterword, Atwood discusses the facts surrounding the events of the tale, and what she chose to invent, to fill in the gaps. Based on her research, there is quite a healthy skeleton to begin with, but the flesh she puts on the bones truly makes the story.

The skeleton is partly composed of fragments, quotat...more Best described as historical fiction, Alias Grace is an account of the life of alleged Canadian murderess Grace Marks, convicted in 1843 at sixteen and pardoned in 1872. In her afterword, Atwood discusses the facts surrounding the events of the tale, and what she chose to invent, to fill in the gaps. Based on her research, there is quite a healthy skeleton to begin with, but the flesh she puts on the bones truly makes the story.

The skeleton is partly composed of fragments, quotations from the published confessions of Marks and other players in the murders, as well as another highly suspect account by Susanna Moodie. The interplay of these factual pieces, as well as bits of poetry and prose from the likes of Tennyson and Dickinson, frame the beginning of each section of the novel. Decoding epigraphs of novels is a task I enjoy, and it was a treat to be provided with so many over the course of the book, to watch how Atwood played with the influence of fact and fiction.

The largest piece of fleshy fiction Atwood puts on her skeleton is the character of Dr. Simon Jordan, an American medical doctor/psychologist/playboy. He enters the story with the intent to observe and and converse with Grace, to get to the bottom of the missing memories she has of the murders and make a breakthrough in his field. However, her tale disturbs memories and issues in his own life, not the least of which are manifested in his dreams, an area of Grace's mind he wished to explore.

Although Grace is the first-person narrator of the story, Simon's thoughts come through a third-person omniscient point of view, as well as through his (and others') correspondence, scattered throughout the book. These shifts are somewhat troublesome, but perhaps pack the greatest impact of the novel; to watch as someone struggles not only with another's memories, but also with the intersection of their own is fascinating voyeurism. In fact, I had the strangest dreams myself while reading this novel, which were often themed on passages I had recently read. As a result, I felt a bit of empathy for Dr. Jordan (at least for a while, but then he got lecherous).

Alias Grace has a different feel than the other pieces I have read by Atwood, and this was both refreshing and jarring. The insertion of a man's thoughts, and now-antiquated perspectives on women, into a woman's story was simultaneously disruptive and historically appropriate. Atwood seems to tell this story in the way that it must be told, and not in the way she wishes it could be (i.e. through Grace alone, as with The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin). This makes for an interesting interplay of stories and lives, and gives the work it's artistry and sense of historical purity. This isn't my favorite Atwood piece so far, but it is, as usual, well constructed and fascinating....less

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Lisa

Lisa rated it:

06/19/08

Read in June, 2008

This book can be read so many ways that I am having a hard time rating the novel. Is it a psychological thriller? A Victorian murder mystery? A social commentary on either the inequalities of the class system or women's rights? Even though I saw all of these threads in the novel, I still feel like I only skimmed the surface of the story.

The story centers around convicted murderess Grace Marks, her sanctimonious circle of community supporters, and the neophyte "psychologist" w...more

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Kerri

Kerri rated it:

(review of isbn 077100835X)

05/11/08

bookshelves: books-i-own, fiction, historical-fiction

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in May, 2008

recommends it for: Katharine

I read this book fairly quickly when I started it, but then I got distracted and never finished it--until now. This story is based on the life of Grace Marks, an Irish (wooh!) maid living in Canada, accused of being an accomplice to the murder of Mr. Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery. The other murderer is McDermott who was hanged for the crime of murdering Mr. Kinnear (the courts decided not to try them for Nancy's murder since they were already accused for one murder), while Grace is imprisoned f...more

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Eszter

Eszter rated it:

06/04/08

first of all, while i loved handmaid's tale and cat's eye, i thought that surfacing, which is still rather fresh in my mind, was pretty dumb. so when i didn't really get into alias grace, i couldn't stop from seeing annoying parallels between the two. for instance, at some points, there was little enough going on that the fiction and the plot sort of dissolved altogether and all i could focus on was picking out the many complex webs and layers atwood had woven together. i truly felt bowled over...more

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Shannon

Shannon rated it:

(review of isbn 3442723434)

02/19/08

Read in February, 2008

This is the story of a celebrated murderess whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment due to her youth and supposed insanity...and the young doctor whose goal to improve conditions in Asylums leads him to interview her. As the Dr. seeks to gain her trust and she begins to tell him her story, will the truth out? Or is the ghostly tale Grace weaves for Dr. Jordan yet another version designed to justify release from her sentence? Will the Governor's wife's friends well-meaning plan...more

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book data (includes all editions)

avg rating (all editions): 3.92 (4923 ratings)
avg rating (this edition): 3.89 (958 ratings)
number of reviews: 376

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