Review: The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin- Margaret Atwood

I’ve never been much of a sucker for award winning books. Even for the Booker winners. But this one had me falling hook, line and sinker. Read this one and you will add Atwood to your all time favorite writers immediately.

The Blind Assassin is a novel within the novel, a story running through two generations, in parallel universes, storming the worlds of two sisters and their families.

The novel has many layers to it, each unraveling an yet unseen sediment of story, each layer revealing as much as hiding. Atwood brings the characters to life with their mannerisms, dialogues crafted with an intensity that only just bubbles at the surface, inviting the reader to jump headlong into their entwined complex lives. The plot twists and turns and you’ll be enthralled till the very last page. Even there you’ll still be wondering if you concluded correctly.

The prose is the best I’ve seen till date, with compelling sentences that will stick out in your memory for a very long time. I found her writing to have the restraint and beauty as that of Irène Némirovsky, author of Suite Française. I’m sure that if I read the book again, I’ll find some more hidden clues and small stories that I’d not noticed the first time around.

Read the complete review here.

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Review: The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters- Elisabeth Robinson

This is one of the best epistolary novels I’ve read in quite some time. Composed entirely of letters from our protagonist to others, it is an engaging, emotional and heart warming read.

Olivia Hunt, a struggling film producer covers a year of highs and lows and her letters, full of tiny details show us how her life and of those around her is going. While struggling to produce a film version of Don Quixote, she has to cope with her sister’s leukemia and not to mention relationship troubles.

The novel touches a cord somewhere. It’s not a very complex read, rather straightforward and peppered with a sprinkling of humor. But it brings out the dynamics of relationships very well. Not all of us are very attached to our families, but we are still there for them as they are for us. And that is what the novel is all about. You might not like doing things for them, but you still do, with all that you have and when you do, you know you did the right thing.