Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

And for a while, I really did. What an unusual, totally original idea for a story: a woman tells her long, twisted family history, which is interspersed with excerpts from her dead sister's novel about two lovers meeting in hotel rooms to tell a science fiction story. What an amazing concept. Unfortunately, it falls flat, for several reasons: the narrator is unengaging and tedious. The secondary characters are cardboard cutouts from a gothic novel. The resolution to the science fiction story is phenomenally unsatisfying. And there are several passages that, while beautifully written, bog the story down and have no thrust. This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the book. There were many portions that I certainly did enjoy. That I finished this in three days should indicate that, if nothing else, Atwood knows how to keep a reader engaged. And there are moments of such startling originality that I had to lean back, put the book down and say out loud, 'my God, that's good writing.' Atwood, it must be said, has a remarkable talent. She's got, however, a few serious flaws as well. First of all, the narrator, Iris Chase Griffen. I know she's had a hard, hard life. I can't imagine going through half of the disastrous events she recounts: mother's death, father's death, a loveless marriage, supervising a loopy sister in a decaying mansion straight out of Jane Eyre. It's all quite tragic. She also makes it quite interminable. If we're going to be with this woman for the better part of 500 pages, we want to like her. But I don't think I've ever come across a more bitter, listless narrator. Everywhere, everywhere there's thunder and gloom and endless references to raped women and raw sewage. Reading Iris's words is akin to sitting with a morbid dinner guest with a tragic history. You're truly sorry to hear the horrible events. You genuinely sympathize. And there's a part of you that just wants to get the hell out. A narrator need not be perky. She need not be funny, even. But she's got to have life. Look at Holden, from 'Catcher in the Rye.' He should be a sobbing rich brat, and he is, but you want to hear more. He's got charisma, and you need that on some level, no matter who you are. If we're going to hear Iris's sob story, we need to be engaged with her. Atwood is far too interested in creating a mood and not interested enough in creating a character. Iris is so stuck in the mud, so alarmingly passive until the very end, that you can't help skipping ahead to see when someone else is going to take the story's focus. If Atwood paints Iris with a very gloomy brush, she barely touches the other characters. Even Iris has to admit, towards the end, that she's described her husband as a total cardboard cutout. She's being far too modest. Her husband Richard and his sister Winnifred are painted as evil, child molesting, power obsessed maniacs. There is no other dimension given them. Reenie, Iris's childhood nurse, might as well join a repertory company and play their stock Irish housekeeper until she drops dead. Father dearest is locked away in his turret drinking and raving, and should've headed to Bronte country long ago. Laura is the only character who emerges with a hint of coloring, and Atwood keeps her shrouded in mystery, unfairly refusing to allow Laura her moment of self-actualization and explanation. The true crime is Alex Thomas, the mysterious orphan. He is the most fascinating character, and is given almost nothing. True, once the book is completed it's quite obvious why he can't be a bigger part of Iris's story. Still, you feel that Atwood's cheated you out of something special, something different and exciting. You feel truly shackled to Iris as the story progresses. This is a problem that I noticed in 'The Handmaid's Tale'; apart from the narrator, no character is given true dimension and depth. This is a frequent Atwood problem. As for the novel-within-a-novel, it's the whole point of reading this book. To watch unnamed lovers squabble and love in dirty hotel rooms while composing a bizarre science fiction universe is fascinating. If she'd wanted to, Atwood probably could have done away with the entire Iris story and worked more on this. The Iris tale, interesting as it may be, has been done before. Nothing really surprises us. Whereas this tale is fresh and interesting. However, that being said, the end of the 'blind assassin', the science fiction tale that the lovers tell, is weak. Unbelievably weak. As in 'wrapped up in one sentence halfway through the book' weak. You really can't believe it. There's more science fiction mumbo jumbo ahead, but nothing about this character. Since he lends his name to the title of the book, you think he'd get better treatment. That's the problem with the science fiction aspect of the novel: it's used as an unusual method to parallel the other two stories. Atwood doesn't explore these characters in their own right, and when it's about a mute sacrificial virgin and a blind assassin falling in love the night before a city's destruction, you'd think she'd pay them more mind. Repressed socialites we've seen. Fugitives telling tales about the fantastical in motel rooms, not so much. Lastly, the book doesn't need to be this long. There are several chapters that simply don't need to be there. The octagenarian Iris telling about her routine trips to the donut shop is not a riveting read. And Ms. Atwood, I understand that death is knocking at this woman's door, and that women are abused and squashed and raped in fifteen different ways, physically and spiritually, in this world. Please stop beating me over the head with it. Telling me once is good. Telling me twenty eight times is pushing it. Atwood is an accomplished poet, and it shows. The passages are gorgeously written. But they get in the way of the story. Atwood needs to figure out how to get her lovely prose to push the narrative ahead. She's not always so good with that. It's not that this is a terrible book. Not in the least. But it could have been so much better. Ms. Atwood got lost in her wonderful idea, and forgot to make her world accessible. She also forgot to bring a little more humanity into the proceedings. And lastly, and most importantly, she didn't give her blind assassin the treatment he deserved. A title character has the right to something better.