Alias Grace (1996)
Why this one?
Another fairly straightforward choice, here. I’ve covered a fair bit of Atwood on the blog already, in the shape of her very good 2000 Booker winner The Blind Assassin, the undeniable Handmaid’s Tale (which should have won) and its solid follow up The Testaments (which probably shouldn’t). All enjoyable stuff, so why not more?
Alias Grace was shortlisted for the Prize in 1996, losing out to Graham Swift’s decent enough Last Orders, though it did win the year’s Giller Prize in Canada. It has been recommended by a few folks as Atwood’s best, or at least one of them.
Thoughts, etc.
Alias Grace is based on the true story, well known in Atwood’s Canada, of the murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in 1843. Atwood focuses mainly on one of the accused murderers, Grace Marks, a servant in Kinnear’s household along with James Montgomery, who was hanged for the murders while Grace was sentenced to life.
It’s a topic that had clearly fascinated Atwood for decades, having first encountered it in a third-hand contemporary account written by Susanna Moodie. She published a poem cycle based on Moodie’s works, and written a television film (The Servant Girl) in 1974 on the subject of the murders. Alias Grace is a later attempt to present a more nuanced picture of the story, having read more widely and understood the limitations of Moodie’s perspective.
The novel takes the story firmly into the realms of fiction, inventing characters to round out the narrative, looking more for generalised truths than trying to seek a single truth in an essentially unsolvable historical mystery. Central among the fictionalised characters is Dr Simon Jordan, who is obsessed with mental health and hopes to open his own asylum. His encounters with Grace in prison form the central framework, allowing us to explore Grace’s world through the lens of contemporary (and rudimentary) psychology, as well as seeing the limitations of the same. He also acts as a sort of proxy for the reader, sharing our frustration at Grace’s deliberate withholding of information, while seeming at the same time in awe of her strength in doing so.
Jeremiah Pontelli (“the peddler”) is another invented character, recurring in Grace’s life through the novel first as a rare ally, and later as as a disguised “neuro-hypnotist”, who takes centre stage in perhaps the novel’s most memorable section, a shocking hypnotism, in which we’re invited to explore one perspective on Grace’s diminished responsibility for her role in the crimes.
It’s a really compelling read, which takes a well-known story and repurposes it to explore a wide range of issues both historical and of ongoing resonance. Most interestingly, it works to reframe the nature of Grace’s silence and inconsistency (the real Grace gave at least three conflicting accounts of her role in the murders) into forms of strength. With little power to impact her destiny (as both a woman and a servant born into poverty) the novel’s Grace uses silence as a sort of strength, thwarting the men who debate her fate by remaining quiet and unknowable. It’s similarly unclear whether her unreliable accounts (or even her behaviour during the hyponotism) are factors of the instability others project onto her, or a further deliberate attempt to frustrate those attempting to “own” her narrative.
It would certainly have made an extremely worthy Booker winner, and one to file alongside The Handmaid’s Tale as missed opportunities - with both clearly superior to the respective years’ winners and to Atwood’s own belated winners. It loses a point or two for a relatively unsatisfactory ending, which I had assumed was based on some form of historical fact - but apparently not, making it doubly odd. Did others have the same issue with the ending or am I alone?
Atwood in ‘96
Score
9
I scored 1996 Booker winner Last Orders, 7/10, which I’m still happy with.
Next up
Back to the Women’s Prize winners, with Valerie Martin’s Property, which won the Prize in 2003.
