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Bezig met laden... De blinde huurmoordenaar (2000)door Margaret Atwood
  
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Het duurt even voor je door hebt hoe deze roman opgebouwd is, want in het begin lijkt het een onsamenhangend mengsel van krantenberichten, een doorlopend levensverhaal, fragmenten over geheime rendez-vous, en nogal opzichtige science-fiction vertellingen. En zelfs nadat je de puzzel bij elkaar hebt, dan blijkt het op het einde toch nog anders in elkaar te steken. Atwood speelt hier duidelijk een spel van misleiding met de lezer volgens de regels van de postmoderne vertelkunst: verhalen in verhalen in verhalen met voortdurende interne en externe verwijzingen. Ingenieus, zeker, maar ik moet zeggen dat het me niet echt geraakt heeft. Dat heeft waarschijnlijk te maken met het bijwijlen zeer trage tempo van de vertelling, de bijna surrealistische science fictionverhalen, de opgeklopte magisch-realistische sfeer en dan die ontknoping op het einde. Interessant is dan weer het vrouwelijke perspectief (doorleefd, zoals altijd bij Atwood) en de verworteling in reële tijdscontexten (eerste wereldoorlog, Depressie…) met vooral oog voor sociale aspecten. Maar daarmee heeft Atwood me (andermaal) niet kunnen overtuigen. (  )1   bookomaniac | May 24, 2016 |  This novel disappointed me. I've read other novels by Margaret Atwood in the past, and remember loving them. This one however...different story. The main story is about Iris, an old Canadian lady, looking back on her life. Her memories focus on her early youth and teenage years, her early marriage, and her relationship with her younger sister Laura. Iris' story is interrupted by newspaper clippings from the 1930's and 1940's dealing with higher class social events involving Iris, and with the deaths of several of the main characters over the course of the years. Then there is a second story, namely that of two secret lovers, meeting up for passionate sex. One of the lovers tells the other the story of the blind assassin, a science fiction story set in another time/space-dimension. So, several storylines to occupy the reader. Of course, this being a novel, we know that there is a connection, but it takes time to see the exact relationship between the stories. Next to that there is a secret, having to do with the early death - possibly the suicide - of Laura, which is described at the start of the novel. We only find out the exact reason after about 500 pages. This set up is promising. However, I experienced the 500 pages as rather boring, and definitely too much. So many descriptions of flowers & plants in gardens, of the climate throughout the year, of terribly boring social events. Endless meetings between lovers, never changing, except for the locations, that are of course described in great detail. I missed the development of characters, I missed deepness. I experienced the relationship (or better: lack of it) of Iris and her daughter and granddaughter as rather unbelievable. Also, what was supposed to be the surprising turn of the story, was so clear to me from perhaps not the very beginning, but definitely from a very early stage in the book, that even this didn't surprise me. The only story that I liked was the science fiction story within a story within a story. Recently I read A gesture life by Chang-Rae Lee, which deals with similar themes: old person looking back on life, feeling regret for past betrayal, always having been alone and lonely. To me Lee's book was a much better elaboration of these themes, and written in beautiful prose. Really touching, whereas this one didn't touch me at all. I'm a bit disappointed, but I haven't given up on Atwood yet! (  ) Tinwara | Jun 24, 2008 |
 Margaret Atwood poses a provocative question in her new novel, "The Blind Assassin." How much are the bad turns of one's life determined by things beyond our control, like sex and class, and how much by personal responsibility? Unlike most folks who raise this question so that they can wag their finger -- she's made her bed, and so on -- Atwood's foray into this moral terrain is complex and surprising. Far from preaching to the converted, Atwood's cunning tale assumes a like-minded reader only so that she can argue, quite persuasively, from the other side. In her tenth novel, Margaret Atwood again demonstrates that she has mastered the art of creating dense, complex fictions from carefully layered narratives, making use of an array of literary devices - flashbacks, multiple time schemes, ambiguous, indeterminate plots - and that she can hook her readers by virtue of her exceptional story-telling skills. The Blind Assassin is not a book that can easily be put to one side, in spite of its length and the fact that its twists and turns occasionally try the patience; yet it falls short of making the emotional impact that its suggestive and slippery plot at times promises.  Ms. Atwood's absorbing new novel, ''The Blind Assassin,'' features a story within a story within a story -- a science-fiction yarn within a hard-boiled tale of adultery within a larger narrative about familial love and dissolution. The novel is largely unencumbered by the feminist ideology that weighed down such earlier Atwood novels as ''The Edible Woman'' and ''The Handmaid's Tale,'' and for the most part it is also shorn of those books' satiric social vision. In fact, of all the author's books to date, ''The Blind Assassin'' is most purely a work of entertainment -- an expertly rendered Daphne du Maurieresque tale that showcases Ms. Atwood's narrative powers and her ardent love of the Gothic. In her ingenious new tale of love, rivalry, and deception, The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood interweaves several genres — a confessional memoir, a pulp fantasy novel, newspaper clippings — to tease out the secrets behind the 1945 death of 25-year-old socialite Laura Chase.  Nearly 20 years ago, in speaking of her craft, the novelist Margaret Atwood observed that ''a character in a book who is consistently well behaved probably spells disaster for the book.'' She might have asserted the more general principle that consistent anything in a character can prove tedious. If we apply the old Forsterian standard that round characters are ones ''capable of surprising in a convincing way,'' Atwood's new novel, for all its multilayered story-within-a-story-within-a-story construction, must be judged flat as a pancake. In ''The Blind Assassin,'' overlong and badly written, our first impressions of the dramatis personae prove not so much lasting as total. Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)TEAdue [TEA ed.] (1113) Is opgenomen inIs verkort in
Iris Chase trouwde met een invloedrijke industrieel toen ze achttien was. Ze was te jong en te naïef om te zien wat het leven voor haar in petto had. Als oude vrouw kijkt ze terug op haar leven en de gebeurtenissen rond de tragische, vroege dood van haar zus Laura. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Group Read: The Blind Assassin
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