Alias Grace

by Charlotte Reads Classics

Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood

Atwood-fest continues! Although not as immediately readable as my last Atwood adventure, I’d still rate it. Obviously I now realise that Margaret Atwood doesn’t ever just write a story: This time she takes a real life figure from history and recreates her biography.

Grace Marks – sixteen year old murderess – tells her tale thirty years on but we never really know whether to believe her. I certainly wanted to… and yet, it wasn’t straightforward. I loved the snippets from newspaper articles and journals (which thanks to the author’s afterword we know are real quotations) that jumped in and guided us. It was very much a conscious building of an image, and yet there is still such an elusive quality to the novel. The subject matter was interesting and deservedly beautifully written. Another storytelling gem!