Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace is the semi-fictionalized story of Grace Marks, Canada's most notorious murderess of the 19^th Century. Her story was sensationalized at the time, and Atwood takes this sensationalism to explore a supernatural explanation to Grace Marks' loss of memory during the murders of her master Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery. Atwood digs into her fictional Grace through a psychologist, Dr. Simon Jordan, after Grace has been in prison for fifteen years. She tells her story while we see how she lives in prison while working the Prison's Governor's home. Dr. Jordan's story is also told, and we see how desperately he wants to believe that he can figure her out and fix her so that he can legitimize his work. The key to unlocking Grace's memory is Mary Whitney, an old friend who died too young. But how can a dead girl answer questions? In ways you couldn't imagine.

I'm still new to Margaret Atwood, but I was pretty disappointed in her storytelling here. Maybe it's because this wasn't the usual dystopian I'm used to from her, or maybe it's because I was expecting a bigger, better explanation. It took forever to get through the first 100 pages, but after that the story moved quickly. Without adding any spoilers, I'd just like to stay there was a specific (and obvious) scene where I feel like I figured it all out. I know why Grace did what she did, even if she couldn't remember. And while I don't have a problem with that type of storytelling, I tend to see Atwood as wanting to keep her readers in the dark as much as possible, or at least as much as her characters.

I loved the story and I'm looking forward to watching the mini-series on Netflix, which was my main motivation for reading this. I will post a link to my review of the mini-series once I watch it.