I started a new job this year, and with it came a company book club. How cool is that? This month’s pick is Margaret Atwood’s ‘Alias Grace’.
The novel follows Grace Marks, a young Irish girl born into poverty. We journey with her across the ocean to Canada, where she finds work as a servant in wealthier homes. And that’s where the trouble begins. Two people end up dead. The law hangs a man and sentences Grace to life in prison. But what happened? Is she guilty? That’s the novel’s beating heart and the question that kept me reading.
I loved ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, but ‘Alias Grace’ didn’t hook me the same way – at least not at first. I struggled with the first third. For a 500+ page book, that’s a lot of slow going. It felt dry and meandering. But somewhere around page 200, things get interesting. Atwood finally gets her hooks in, and from then on, ‘Alias Grace’ keeps you guessing right up to the final pages. The palpable tension as we near the murder was excellent and breathless. The book also shows how women’s tales from the 1800s can mirror modern feminist struggles.
That said, the book is heavy with unnecessary detail. Atwood did her research and wants to show it, but we don’t need all the facts as readers. We need to trust that she knows her stuff. The book oscillates between building great tension and slowing itself down with excess.
In the end, I liked it. And that’s a testament to how strong the good bits are – they outweigh the negatives. With tighter editing and a slimmer page count (a la ‘Handmaid’s’), this could’ve been a four- or five-star read.
As it stands, ‘Alias Grace’ is a decent novel that urges reflection on modern inequalities.
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
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