Atwood, Margaret. The Blind Assassin. New York: Anchor Books, 2001.

I've read, now, three Atwood novels and none of them is A Handmaid's Tale. Not that I'm bragging or anything. But I've read, in this order, Alias Grace and Oryx & Crake, and now The Blind Assassin and all of them are just like so awesome!

This novel is three novels in one. Starting from the title, it refers to this work of sci-fi that's being spooled out—orally, basically—from one character to another while they're in bed together. Like post-coitally. She asks to hear a story (he's a sci-fi hack writer, among other things) and he tells her about these people on another planet who sacrifice young virgins once a year to "the gods" and the blind assassin who is sent to stop this ritual. The telling of this story is part of a larger novel, also called The Blind Assassin, written by Laura Chase, which was published posthumously and became a cult classic.

Laura died after driving off a bridge (whether this was a suicide remains a mystery throughout the book) in the 1930s. She was survived by her older sister, Iris, whose attempts to tell her and Laura's story becomes the third novel, the frame surrounding it all. She does this in the present, well into her 80s, and so part of the time she's writing about her life now, all the failures of her aging body, and but most of the time she's flashing back to almost ancient history at this point, she and her sister living together in their father (a button factory owner)'s manse named Avilion.

So you've got Iris's life now. Iris and Laura's life then. Laura's novel about this couple that meets for illicit trysts. And her (Laura's) male character's ongoing sci-fi narrative. It is, yes, a lot to keep track of and is also, yes, a good reason why this novel is more than 500 pages long.

But a page turner, too. To say anything of value, I'm going to have to ruin the book's mystery or central effects or whatever, so I'll try to change the font color, and if you have no plans to read this or don't mind spoliers, then just highlight what follows and don't say I didn't warn you.

Naturally, with so many layers of narrative, point of view is going to be a central concern. For the record, Laura's novel and the sci-fi narrative are told in the third person. Iris's narratives (both present and past) are told in the first person. And where these narratives intersect is in Iris's eventual confession that she wrote Laura's novel, after her sister's death, attributing it to her for two reasons: as a memorial, and as a mask. For once we know Iris wrote about this adulterous couple, we realize that the novel is completely autobiographical.

In telling the story of her life and Laura's, Iris mentions Alex, the man we come to understand she's had an ongoing affair with, but all we she reveals is that he once tried to kiss her, when she was very young, and she ran off. Shortly after, she gets married, and we never hear about him again. So it becomes a puzzle of sorts for her as a narrator: how to present herself as an authority while also hiding a certain part of the truth. And then how to reveal the truth in a way that doesn't feel manipulative to her reader (who, specifically, is her granddaughter; she's writing this for her granddaughter).

Iris handles this by keeping the focus on her sister. Also, it seems that she's assuming a familiarity on the part of her reader with Laura's novel. Atwood peppers this novel throughout Iris's own, so that our understanding of who these two lovers are happens alongside our understanding of what happened to Iris and Laura. In doing this, when the truth is revealed it's as though Iris never really did it, that we just came to understand it as she has. "As for the book, Laura didn't write a word of it," she writes (512). "But you must have known that for some time."

The question I have, though, is why wait to reveal this? If Iris's intended reader knew the story "Laura wrote," why not just begin with this fact?

On a narratological level I can't figure it out. But one thing is obvious: it makes for a far more engaging story. I tend to repeat myself a lot. And one thing I say again and again, even if I only write it, is that all good stories are mysteries of a kind. Atwood's stories are always among the most mysterious. And therefore by the transitive property they're the best.