The layout of this book took me some effort to wrap my head around, though it makes perfect sense eventually. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand you must see your left hand erasing it. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. “The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. In the end, Iris’s story will explain Laura’s.

Between chapters of Iris’s present and past are excerpts from the book published posthumously in Laura’s name: a tale called The Blind Assassin that a pair of lovers spins for each other across months of clandestine meetings. She has seen the deaths of most of her family and friends by this time, and narrates with an interesting blend of cynicism and hope. Now Iris is an eighty year-old woman of limited means and ill-repute, and spends her days writing a secret account of the downward spiral of her life. Their once-affluent family falls on hard times in the first world war, and the descent of their heritage in the aftermath of that war and the lead-up to the second war leaves them tied to unpleasant fates. It’s also one of my backlogged BOTM books from 2017, so I’m also making progress on my personalized 2018 reading challenge.Ībout the book: One could say Iris and her sister, Laura, were doomed from birth. This winter I chose The Blind Assassin, a 500+ page story with dual plot lines.

This is my fourth year, and fourth Atwood novel. I’ve gotten into the habit of reading one of Margaret Atwood’s books every year.

The blind assassin book