12.10 Judgment - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the tenth day of the month is "Judgment." I have personally decided that I will pass judgment on a book on the tenth day of each month.

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Sometimes I think about other people's careers and I really wonder what I'm doing with my life. Margaret Atwood started publishing books in the late 1960s and her most recent novel came out last year. That's a career spanning more than fifty years. Meanwhile, I have a dog and a cat. Anyway, I read The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, which was published in 2000, so this is mid-career Atwood, even though that was more than twenty years ago. 

In this book we follow Iris Chase as she lives her life, at first as a schoolgirl from a pampered family, later as a trophy wife to a failing industrialist. Meanwhile, there are layers revealed about her family's history and a story within a story about two unnamed lovers who meet in seedy locations while the man tells the woman a science fiction story about a blind assassin. (That's right. A story within a story within a story. It's all meta and The Wind Through the Keyhole up in here.)

I struggled through the first two hundred pages, thought the middle third of the book was an absolute blast, and then struggled again with the last third of the book. I thought the themes about the powerlessness of women and the role money plays in controlling behavior was strong. I also found myself thinking about the loyalty between women (Iris and her sister, the sisters' caretaker, and later on Iris and Myra) and wondering what exactly Atwood was trying to say by all this.

And in the end, that's my criticism of this book. I don't know what it's trying to tell me. I think maybe it's because I'm not a smart enough reader to get the message, but all I got from this was that bad things happen to women and there's nothing any other woman can do to stop it and that felt...sad?  

It's beautiful, poetic writing as expected from Atwood. I guess I am just a reader who needs a little bit more guidance. 3/5 stars

Lines of note:

Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blue the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's moon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear. (page 76)

I thought this was so true. Sometimes you can get overly romantic about what someone who is far away is like. There's a reason long-distance relationships sometimes are challenging when the distance goes away.

Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself, through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and snuffles, romance only sighs. Does she want more than that - more of him? Does she want the whole picture? (page 262)

I like this paired with the above quotation. It seems to be on the same theme. 

I have to say she looked like a suet pudding, but then most babies do. (page 388)

Preach it, Atwood. Babies look like little weird aliens and then suddenly they start to look like how they will look when they're just out of their toddler years.

Things I looked up:

otiose (page 54) - serving no practical purpose or results 

brickbat (page 113) - a remark or comment that is highly critical and typically insulting

Orange Order (page 149) - Fraternal organization found in Canada and other countries, organizing many community and other benevolent activities

I.O.D.E. (page 149) - Canadian national women's charitable association (Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire)

porphyry (page 227) - any of various decorative granites or igneous rocks with coarse-grained crystals such as feldspar or quartz

marcelled (page 302) - a hairstyle characterized by repeated regular waves, popular in the 1920s

Hat mentions:

A staggering 59 hat mentions in this book! That's an average of a hat every nine pages. Hats with veils, light-coloured hats, straw hats, sun hats, hats and gloves, tilt of a hat, battered hats, wool hats. There were even TWO chapter titles with the word hat ("The eggshell hat" and "The Blind Assassin: The Top Hat Grill"). 

My favorite?

Her hat was the same shade - a round swirl of green fabric, balanced on her head like a poisonous cake. (page 230)

The green hat reminded me of all the green hats Katie had in ATGIB and I liked how this description made it very clear what the narrator thought of the person wearing the hat.