Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Every section break of this novel comes with a square from a patchwork quilt. There's a lot of talk of quilting patterns in this book as Grace Marks, our main character, slowly becomes revealed to us in bits and pieces, and we have to stitch those small sections of information together. I'm not going to say this framing narrative was a bit on the nose because it did take me a few sections to figure out what was going on, but lo! I caught the symbolism, so it wasn't NOT obvious, if you know what I mean.

Marks has been accused of murder. Did she do it? Did she not? We hear her side of things, as told to a doctor specializing in mental illness. We hear the side of doctors who think she totally did it. We get bits and pieces of her supposed confession.  And this mystery is unfolding in 1843 Canada, so we get all kinds of talk about the trouble in the States (vague hints of the soon to come Civil War), fashions, economic classes changing power and import, and just all sorts of fun historical details, like what clothing was being worn and what modes of transport were being used. We read about the subtle changes happening in relationships between men and women, including brutal scenes of rape and abortion. There's just so much intricate specificity in Atwood's writing that you could just wallow forever in the setting, but there's also so much character and plot happening that you can't wallow there.

This is based on a true story and Atwood connects bits of narrative from poetry, newspaper articles, and other writings on the Marks case to set the scene and then creates her own fictionalized version of what really happened to fill in the details. I guess her explanation makes as much sense as any other explanation, although Occam's razor tells us that the simplest explanation (she helped her accomplice murder two people) might make more sense.

Anyway, it's not a definitive accounting of anything, but it definitely is great writing.  If you haven't given this one a chance, do it. The writing itself is luminous.