By the author of The Handmaid's Tale *** A major NETFLIX series
A crime novel set in Canada in the nineteenth century, where an up-and-coming psychiatrist conducts a series of interviews with a young woman who was imprisoned for the murder of her employer and his lover.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Summary
By the author of The Handmaid's Tale *** A major NETFLIX series
A crime novel set in Canada in the nineteenth century, where an up-and-coming psychiatrist conducts a series of interviews with a young woman who was imprisoned for the murder of her employer and his lover.
Description
Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s is wound this tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery. Was Grace Marks a female fiend? A femme fatale? Or a weak and unwilling victim? The accusation of murderess follows her "like a taffeta skirt along the floor".
Awards
Short-listed for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 1998
Short-listed for IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 1998
Short-listed for Booker Prize for Fiction 1996
Critic Reviews
“The outstanding novelist of our age”
'A sensuous, perplexing book, at once sinister and dignified, grubby and gorgeous, panoramic yet specific...I don't think I have ever been so thrilled...This, surely is as far as a novel can go' Julie Myerson, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 'Brilliant...Atwood's prose is searching. So intimate it seems to be written on the skin' Hilary Mantel 'Margaret Atwood is to be congratulated' Anita Brookner, SPECTATOR '' Peter Kemp, SUNDAY TIMES 'Oh brilliant! I cannot rave enough...with its explosive mixture of sex, murder and class conflict, ALIAS GRACE is an absolute winner' Val Hennessey, DAILY MAIL 'One of the best modern novels I've come acrosss...written with such compelling intimacy that at times it is hard not to feel one is reading a memoir written exclusively for oneself.' THE WEEK 'In 1843, a 16-year-old Canadian housemaid named Grace Marks was tried for the murder of her employer and his mistress. The sensationalistic trial made headlines throughout the world, and the jury delivered a guilty verdict. Yet opinion remained fiercely divided about Marks- -was she a spurned woman who had taken out her rage on two innocent victims, or was she an unwilling victim herself, caught up in a crime she was too young to understand? Such doubts persuaded the judges to commute her sentence to life imprisonment, and Marks spent the next 30 years in an assortment of jails and asylums, where she was often exhibited as a star attraction. In Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood reconstructs Marks's story in fictional form. Her portraits of 19th-century prison and asylum life are chilling in their detail. The author also introduces Dr Simon Jordan, who listens to the prisoner's tale with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief. In his effort to uncover the truth, Jordan uses the tools of the then rudimentary science of psychology. But the last word belongs to the book's narrator--Grace herself.' AMAZON.CO.UK
About the Author
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty works, including fiction, poetry and critical essays and her books have been published in over thirty-five countries. She has won many literary awards and prizes. She lives in Canada.
'Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.'Grace Marks. Female fiend. Femme fatale. Or weak and unwilling victim.Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery.
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