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Kim
Rating:
Review
This book was my first introduction to Ms. Atwood, and remains one of my favorites. The author tells the story of 16-year-old Grace Marks, who was a real person convicted of killing two people in the mid-1800s. While the story is mostly Grace’s, her doctor, Simon Jordan’s trials and tribulations are also detailed throughout the book, which I thought added depth to her story. As a reader, I constantly questioned Grace’s guilt or innocence, which kept me turning each page. I did find while reading this book that I often wondered how much of it was true, and how much was fiction, but the Author’s Afterword at the end of the book cleared some of those questions up.
Best Line:
“They are a low class of person”.
Suzanne
Rating:
Review
Alias Grace is a great novel based on the story of a real 16 year-old maid’s sensationalized murder trial in mid-1800’s Canada. Atwood establishes a strong sense of the times – the life of the lower classes, the level of medical and psychological knowledge, the condition of the prisons and insane asylums – and even inserts actual newspaper clippings about the trial. Grace’s story gets told from several different viewpoints, including her own and that of up and coming psychologist Dr. Simon Jordan, who takes an interest in her case. Even the minor characters piqued my interest, like the Jewish peddler who turns up again later in her life. This is quite effective in highlighting the disturbingly different sides to Grace’s personality, and ultimately making you question what was real and what was imagined. This format does make the first few pages a bit disconcerting, but it’s worth it. Also intriguing is the way each chapter begins with a different quilt pattern.
Best Line:
“It says there were two different trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge; but I believe there was only the one, and that the Fruit of Life and the Fruit of Good and Evil were the same”.
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