In the first week of rereading, I mentioned that what I remembered of my first reading was that it was fast and seemingly steady; I had forgotten all the different types of narratives (the newspaper articles and the excerpts from Laura’s novel) and remembered only Iris.
One reason for this is evident in the final five chapters—which are short compared to the rest of the novel, the scenes swift and compelling—as well as in the resolution. Atwood seems to present answers to every imaginable question, and it feels tremendously satisfying to have it all laid out.
This sense of security and rootedness and solidity is what remained with me. It felt almost delicious to have the threads weave together, that sense of surprise and inevitability that I enjoy.
But the very next day, when I sat down to make my notes, I realised (once more) that I didn’t know what I thought I knew.
I was reminded of Aimee coming to Iris: “Most of all she was tired of the feeling that things were being hidden from her. The family had covered it up; no one would tell her the truth; our mouths opened and closed and words came out, but they were not words that led to anything.”
When Aimee learns the truth, and Iris learns of her discovery, we feel the emotional resonance of both the secrecy and the revelation.
It’s almost an afterthought, to understand that the truth that Aimee has discovered is… actually not the truth. At least, not as it has been revealed to us.
MARM 2025 PLANS
Launch (November 1)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Death by Clamshell” (November 4)
The Blind Assassin Parts I-IV (November 6)
Week Two: Update and Check-In (November 8)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Freeforall” (November 11)
The Blind Assassin Parts V-VI (November 13)
Week Three: Update and Check-In (November 15)
Margaret Atwood’s 86th Birthday (November 18)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Metepsychosis” (November 18)
The Blind Assassin Parts VII-IX (November 20)
Week Four: Update and Check-In (November 22)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Airborne: A Symposium” (November 25)
The Blind Assassin Parts X-XV (November 27)
Wrap-Up (November 30)
I was reminded of this observation, which emerges after we come to know more about the storyteller who writes more about lizard-people than humans: “None of this happens, of course. Or it does happen, but not so you would notice. It happens in another dimension of space.” After it emerges that there are elements of real-life cloaked in tropes from B-movies and issues of Weird Tales.
Reminded of the discussion of motivation, the question of why one looks to diaries and letters and histories to unearth the truth. “Curiosity is not our only motive: love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on.”
Reminded that this is, still, Iris’s story: “I thought of myself as recording. A bodiless hand, scrawling across a wall.
I wanted a memorial. That was how it began.” That we could ascribe to her every single one of those motives. (That hand links back to another photograph at the beginning of the novel but, also, every curated object—photograph or narrative, is held by someone’s hand.)
We feel secure and informed at the end, but do we know anything more or anything different than Aimee knew?
She was convinced. We are convinced. It’s such a good story.
Questionssss for anyone reading along:
Who is the titular blind assassin, and what do the Xs in the school notebooks signify, and what happened to Alex, and what did Reenie really think, and do you believe Iris?
Question for anyone:
There’s a lovely passage about secrets here, which begins “I wonder which is preferable—to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word….” What book about a secret have you recently read or loved a lot?
NOTE: Just a reminder that there are spoilers, in the comments below, about The Blind Assassin.
Margaret Atwood
Q “Is your hair really like that, or do you get it done?”
A “If I got it done, would I do this?”
|Memories from 1972 book tour, recounted in Book of Lives (2025)|
Another great Atwood quote. Ha! She does have *interesting* hair.
I assumed it was the case that Alex did die in Europe; the X and Os were sexual encounters–or Laura’s period, more likely. What was uncertain at first–even this time–is who’s the lover with whom Alex is concocting The Blind Assassin story. We’re told the book came out under Laura’s name early on. I’m quite sure the first time I assumed it was Laura.
Like wadholloway above, I’m not sure I was that interested in the sci-fi-ish Blind Assassin story. I could believe Alex writing such a thing for money, and I could believe the lovers making it up as a sort of foreplay, but I’m still not sure I cared, or that I thought that hard about how it reflected back on the main story.
Fun reread. I’m sure I just zipped through it the first time–as I mentioned in the first comment, I didn’t find it that difficult because of the structure. It was nice to think about it a little more this time. (Though I still read it pretty quick.)
I wish I could remember that for sure, but I suspect I also believed it was Laura who wrote the manuscript, and that I believed she wrote it about her time with Alex (and it never occurred to me…why would Iris have made sure, then, it was published… after Laura’s death?). This time, the detail about the manuscript having been in Iris’s underwear drawer seemed to leap off the page at me, so maybe that was my subconscious mind leaping onto a detail that would have contradicted my previous (murky) belief. In response to your comment on the previous week’s post, I didn’t notice m/any clues either, even watching for them; so I still think the bigger point of the story is how stories are told and the sleight-of-hand that occurs unremarked upon while we’re paying “attention”.
It makes sense to me that if Laura had written a novel, Iris might try to publish it after she died, so I’m quite sure that didn’t clue me in to the novel actually being written by Iris. But I don’t think either time I particularly noticed where the novel was hidden, but yes, that would be a definite clue it was written by Iris.
I agree a (the?) major theme is how stories get told–or how they don’t get told, or only eventually told, in the case of Laura’s ongoing rape and abuse. And that’s really told, and constructed, because The Blind Assassin embedded novel is partly constructed by Alex and Iris together (or at least Iris would have us believe that in the end).
Hmmmm, now that’s a curious possibility you’ve exposed. If Iris as storyteller has misled everyone into thinking that Laura was the actual author, she also could have written herself into the manuscript as a co-collaborator with Alex even if she was the sole architect of “Laura’s book” through and through.
We know that she has looked away (at least) or concealed (at most) the truth of what happened between Richard and Laura (i.e. what Richard did to her) from this bit near the end: “There it was, then, right out on the table. This was the crossroads: either Laura had been mad, or Richard had been lying. I couldn’t believe both. ‘He told me a story,’ I said evasively.”
So I guess we also must ponder whether she actually was the sole author, and maybe the fictional part was including Alex (who might actually have been more in love with Laura, partly based on Laura’s having rescued him originally).
The fact that Richard seems like a more prominent character than Alex in the novel overall could be simply that we don’t recognise Alex as being part of the pair of lovers until the end but it could also be that he’s not a full-fledged character in Iris’s story (either in her real life or in her written narrative).
I find it fun to muse about this but I also don’t really care if I ever figure it out: is that the same for you, or do you really want to KNOW?
Oh, I accept that you can’t know–unless I cornered Marge out on the street somewhere & made her tell me. 😉 But I’m generally willing to let the mystery be (quoting Iris DeMent) and merely speculate.
I accept in the end that it was Iris who wrote the embedded novel. Really, it’s only that, if Laura had been the author of the novel, it would make sense that Iris would try to publish it. John Kennedy Toole’s mother went out & got Confederacy of Dunces published after his death, because she thought it was good. So I didn’t discount the possibility of the author being Laura until I was told otherwise–and when I was told that by Iris I believed it.
There is fudging by Iris, though. While she tells the events of the past largely in order, she doesn’t tell us about Richard’s bad behaviour until the very end. Is this to keep the revelation until she knew it? Or did she know earlier and couldn’t face it? People do know and not know in that sort of situation. I don’t imagine we’ll ever know exactly when Alice Munro knew, for instance, though we do know that even after she knew, she didn’t want to know (and pretended it wasn’t so.) Are we meant to have that sort of thought about Iris? I’m not sure, and while there isn’t much to suggest it, there is a little.
I felt Alex was a relatively vivid character for most of the way; it was only that Richard becomes so much more vivid once we learn about him, while Alex dies offstage as it were.
I’ve always known that a tied-up-with-a-satin-ribbon ending wasn’t my thing, but the Chekov stories read over the summer, and this reread…I’m starting to think that I prefer endings with possibiliites so that readers are meant to interpret things to suit themselves (not accidentally ambiguous, but constructed so there’s room for different-even conflicting-“truths”).
That’s true: we do have real-world examples in which survivors have secured publication for loved ones’ work (even against their wishes). So I can see that’s a real possibility. And we aren’t presented with reasons to distrust Iris on that score, other than her own admission of omitting things (which could specifically refer to what she knew Richard had done, knew at least by the time she wrote all this down… if not before).
Nonetheless, if she was capable of lying in public to say it was Laura’s work, she must also be capable of lying in private (to us) later that it was hers. I think there’s reason to contemplate it, but I hadn’t. BUT I’m still with you: I think she did write it.
True: it’s the kind of situation one can never truly understand from the outside. We can see it in this novel, but in real life we can’t observe when/how other families’ private efforts towards confrontation and reconcilation stagnate/proceed. In her memoir, MA clearly states that she knew nothing about that situation in Munro’s family: I was a little surprised she included it but perhaps she felt she had to do so.
Does it make sense when I say that almost every book I read is about secrets, in some way? Or maybe it just feels like whenever you read a book that is character-driven, there are always secrets involved. I’m currently reading “I hope this finds you well” which is HILARIOUS, and it’s about a ton of secrets of those who work together. Stay tuned for my review!
Yeah, I thought of you when I asked that, and wondered if you’d like a hundred books. heheh Your favourite genre, really!
I have been “saving” that one. I have in mind it’ll be like Molly of the Mall? But not exactly? I think you also liked that one a lot?
Hmmm what is Molly of the Mall? Am I totally missing something? Wouldn’t be the first time (haha)
Oops, I thought I remembered that you had read that one…it must have been Naomi!
I have read this twice before and I still find it very slippery to remember the details! This is the kind of book that one could read multiple times.
As for secrets, I have a Goodreads shelf named that. It mostly contain mysteries and thrillers, but a literary novel with secrets aplenty that I really enjoyed was The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden.
When I’m reading a book like this, my current suspicions register deeply while reading, so that I often conflate them with the story’s actual ending. Here I thought I’d remembered some secrets, but I was wrong!
Ohhhh, I really want to read The Safekeep…I should see where the holds list is at now.
My first book group read this about 25 yrs ago I guess and your post has only confirmed how completely I have forgotten everything about this story, even though I’m sure I enjoyed it at the time.
Given your comments on perspective through this November, I’m sure you would enjoy it even more than you did before. There are so many fine details about pov to contemplate, if that’s your jam.
I listened for a couple of hours around the house (my hearing aids are excellent for audiobooks) basically Part XII to the end. I didn’t progress much in my understanding. Overall, I didn’t pay any attention to the SF story. I enjoyed the back and forth ness of the structure and thought it worked well. I didn’t like that so much of the novel was Iris telling the story. (I think Atwood struggles with writing a direct description of what is happening, perhaps just in her head, because it works well enough when she does). I’m not sure Iris didn’t straight out lie to us some of the time. Atwood likes to be tricky (and that’s one of the reasons I won’t read her memoir).
What I wanted to do was relisten to Aimee’s version of her birth, but I couldn’t locate it, so I finish up not being sure of the granddaughter’s parentage. Which might be my lack of understanding, or might have been MA’s intention.
Because we as readers see the lovers in their various rooms discussing his stories, we have hints throughout, as to how he spins out certain elements in the story, which is how, later, she comes to read his published stories for hints of his thoughts and feelings when they are apart, but one can enjoy the book without following that thread and I’ve heard people say they’ve skipped the SF entirely.
If we had more than one character narrating here, we would know how much of the story is a lie, but I think the motivation in telling a story THIS way, is to remind us that everyone tells their own story, and the challenge we all face in life is to figure out where bias resides.
You’ve just missed it, it’s in Part 11, in the segment titled “Brightly Shone the Moon”, a couple segments back from Part 12. Not that I think you want to go back, but because I hate not being able to find a passage and start to wonder if it even existed in the first place!
Such an enticing review! I really must re-read this.
I think I found it very satisfying on a first read, but I feel as though I got more out of it by rereading, so I hope you find that to be true as well!
I listened to TBA a month ago but as soon as it had gone back to the library, all the slippery bits were gone and all I was left with was Iris getting old. I know there was a child (who had a child, who old Iris pines after throughout the novel) but who was the mother and who was the father? The only thing I can do is borrow it again (I have) and re-listen to the last few chapters (and I’ll have to do it at home which is something I never do). Another comment will follow anon.
I was constantly flipping back and forth to check certain details as the “truth” started to emerge, and I rarely re-listen with audio because I’m not as adept at moving around in an audiofile so I end up either relistening to a bunch that I hadn’t aimed for or else missing entirely the bit I’d searched for (and I’m sure that’s impossible while driving, even if one is deftly FFing and RWing), so I completely understand how this would slip away after a single listen. But don’t feel obliged to relisten when you have so many other good books in your stack; you can trust that all the t’s were crossed and all the i’s dotted in a wholly unexpected but logical way: the equivalent of a HAE… without much (any?) happiness.