Alias Grace in Around the World in 80 Books

Jul 19, 2017 Erica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Devoured it. Loved it. A few quibbles with the utterly transparent "surprise" of Grace's identity, Jeremiah's mesmerism, and the way things end for her, but otherwise, this is a great work of 19th century detail, horror, and male psychology.
A few memorable details:
loc 373: "Where there's a doctor it's always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows."
loc 614: "One need not be a Chamber--to be Haunted- Devoured it. Loved it. A few quibbles with the utterly transparent "surprise" of Grace's identity, Jeremiah's mesmerism, and the way things end for her, but otherwise, this is a great work of 19th century detail, horror, and male psychology.
A few memorable details:
loc 373: "Where there's a doctor it's always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows."
loc 614: "One need not be a Chamber--to be Haunted--/One need not be a House--/The Brain has Corridors--surpassing--/Material Place--// Ourself behind ourself, concealed--/Should startle most--Assassin hid in our Apartment/Be Horror's least..." --Emily Dickinson, 1863
loc 1335: "to look at her is to believe that suffering does indeed purify."
loc 4229: Awesome joke about Sir Walter Scott novels: people can't "move an inch in romantic landscapes...without being accosted by madwomen, who were always jumping in front of arrows and bullets not intended for them, which had the virtue at least of putting an end to their caterwauling and misery; or else they were constantly throwing themselves into the ocean, at such a rate that the sea would soon be clogged with drowned bodies, as to constitute a serious hazard to shipping....Scott put so many corpses into his books for the sake of the ladies, because the ladies must have blood, there is nothing that delights them so much as a weltering corpse."
loc 6362, page 424: "As Tennyson says in his overtly botanical fashion, it is time to pluck "the red-blossom of war." (Simon writing of the build up to the Civil War in Jan 1860)
loc 6865/pg 457: "The truth is that very few understand the truth about forgiveness. It is not the culprits who need to be forgiven; rather it is the victims, because they are the ones that cause all the trouble. If only they were less weak and careless, and more foresightful, and if they would keep from blundering into difficulties, think of all the sorrow in the world that would be spared." ...more

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