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Alias Grace: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Rating:  167 reviews
Sales Rank: 21910
Media: Paperback
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 0385490445
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385490443
ASIN: 0385490445
Publication Date: October 13, 1997
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Amazon.com Review
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.
Product Description
In Alias Grace, bestselling author Margaret Atwood has written her most captivating, disturbing, and ultimately satisfying work since The Handmaid's Tale. She takes us back in time and into the life of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century.Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. Dr. Simon Jordan, an up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness, is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Is Grace a female fiend? A bloodthirsty femme fatale? Or is she the victim of circumstances?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 162 more reviews...
 New to Atwood, loved Alias Grace November 24, 2008
Mommy & Nurse (Raliegh, NC)
I am new reader to M. Atwood. I must say that Alias Grace was a wonderfully thought provoking novel. I am compelled to further research the Grace Marks story after finishing this book. I am looking forward to reading other works by this author in the future.
brilliant and absorbing July 28, 2008
Rachel M. Evans (Kansas City, MO)
Accused of being an accomplice to murder, Grace has been locked away in a crazy house for women. It's the mid 1800s and women aren't subject to the death sentence, only the living death of perpetual mistreatment in the asylum.
Skipping between Grace's past, the murky events surrounding the murder, and her present in which everyone is obsessed with Spiritualism, Alias Grace shows just how much crazier the world was when it was directed by spooky and morally pretentious feelings. Read the rest of this review at http://maysmachete.blogspot.com/2008/02/babes-in-history-and-fiction-part-4.html
Amazing Grace: how sweet the read July 18, 2008
Lilly Flora (Portland, OR)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Alias Grace" is probably the book that sat for the longest in my too read stack, ever since I read "The Handmaiden's tale" about four years before. I don't know why I took so long to get around to reading it, since when I did finally pick it up for good I raced through the novel as fast as I could.
This is the tale of the most notorious murderess of the 19th century-Grace Marks, who was convicted for the killing of her employer Thomas Kinnear and also thought to have killed his housekeeper and lover Nancy Montgomery (though the case was never tried) before running across the border from Canada with an accomplice and possible lover James McDermott, who was also a servant in the Kinnear household. McDermott was hanged for his part in the killings and Grace got life in prison but continued to be of interest to many in Canada who worked to secure a pardon on the grounds of insanity for years after her incarceration.
Our story begins when Grace has been 19 years in jail and is now 35 years old-but still just as beautiful as she was when she first stood trial. The group who is trying to get her a pardon-which includes many preachers, respectable men and women and the governess of the prison herself- have engaged a doctor of a new kind-one who studies minds to access her claim that she remembers nothing of the murders themselves. But since her capture Grace has told at lest three different versions of events of that fateful day and Dr. Simon Jordon is more than skeptical of her tale, though he desperately wants to believe the beautiful prisoner and use the results of his interviews to make a name for himself.
So what is Grace-villain or victim? As she tells her life story and they come closer and closer to the day she claims not to remember the young doctor becomes more and more unsure and his own life begins to take on the shadowy tone of a dream.
Told in first person by Grace, third by Dr. Jordon, sometimes in letters, occasionally in poem or newspaper clipping or a history of the time this is a novel where you are never sure what end is up. Grace appears to be truthful but her account is often so muddied and out of sort's stream-of-consciences that it's difficult to tell what is metaphor, what is truth and what she just isn't saying. Though various means are tried to unlock her memory-including suggestion by object and hypnosis you can never be sure if Grace is truthful or not-or if, like Dr. Jordon, you're over thinking the question to the point of insanity yourself.
This is a very, very engaging novel and impossible to put down. It's a mystery of the purest sort and one in which we will never know the truth because it is firmly locked in Grace's own head-and who is going to believe anything a convicted murderess says anyway?
Margaret Atwood is an amazing writer, spinning out fiction with facts that were supposed to be true at the time, along with poetry and quotes from various people on the nature of insanity that leaves you constantly guessing what way the novel is going. Even the title of the book is a mystery because the term alias means a fake name-and Grace is most surely Grace Marks' true name. So is someone pretending to be Grace? Is she someone else altogether-or just lying so much that she's become new? Or something else completely-something deep in her mind that no one yet understands?
There is no doubt that this novel is at once a work of contemporary fiction and a classic for the ages. I very much enjoyed reading it. If you're interested in domestic life of the 19th century, Canadian history or the history of the mental health world then this is a good book for you. Or if you just like a good read where you're constantly guessing and the author is always a step ahead.
Five stars.
Stunning June 10, 2008
Quiet Summer (USA)
This book is absolutely wonderful, I couldn't put it down. The characters in this book are so rich I felt as if I were spying and that is a rarity these days. If you miss a good read, buy this book. So many of the popular authors of today write triteful, boring, predictable novels featuring the same boxed characters over and over. This book truly is what a good book should be: the story is engrossing, the character is so real you are instantly at her side with anticipation of the coming events, its stunning. I won't go into detail about the plot, you can read that in the description just like I did before purchasing it. I will end by saying it's more than the sum of its parts and you will want to keep it to read again.
Subtle Genius June 9, 2008
Ana Mardoll
Alias Grace / 0-385-49044-5
I love all of Margaret Atwood's books, but I love Alias Grace in particular. The story and the heroine are shaped so carefully and with such subtlety that one can never be certain if the 'celebrated murderess' is an innocent pawn in something much larger than she can fathom or a calculating liar capable of committing cold murder and getting away with it.
Like all of Atwood's novels, there are multiple layers of meaning and parallels to be found in Alias Grace. One major layer is that of perception - Grace is never truly understood by the people around her, rather she is perceived. For instance, her doctor wants to perceive her as being attracted to him, but when her lawyer confesses to the doctor that he perceived a similar attraction earlier, the doctor angrily assumes that the lawyer is a letch and a liar who misperceived Grace's actions and intentions. The doctor fails to even consider the alternatives - perhaps Grace is/was attracted to both men, or perhaps she is/was attracted to neither men and both their perceptions are/were wrong. Throughout the novel, Grace is perceived numerous times, by numerous people, to be a large number of contradictory states and emotions, but these observers only seek to confirm their preconceptions - never to refine or refute those preconceptions.
The most important subtext of the novel, in my opinion, is that of the fundamental power differences between men and women of the time period. Grace is completely defined by the men in her life - she crosses oceans at the behest of her uncle, she obtains her first job (and meets her formative friend) at the instruction of her father, her friend is killed by the malpractice of a male doctor, Grace is forced out of her job through the actions of her master's son, she must hastily accept the position offered by Nancy because she fears that her current master may assault her, she is harassed by men on the way to her new position, she is subsequently trapped at her new job by lack of transportation options (and her one offered escape requires that she live with her rescuer 'in sin' in a manner that she is not prepared to accept), and - in the end - even if she wanted to stop the murders, she is helpless to stop her male accomplice.
Grace's doctor serves as a subtle parallel to Grace's own situation. When time and circumstances maneuver him into a relationship with a crazy would-be murderer, the doctor is able to utilize the privileges of his birth and resources to flee the situation in a manner that Grace could not. It is even hinted that if the lady had murdered her husband and then claimed the doctor as a willing accomplice, his protestations of innocence would be believed, because he is male, high-born, and rich. Whereas Grace was - in many minds - considered guilty from the beginning, because she was female, common, and poor. She was not believed when she (plausibly) claimed that a murderer had dragged her off in fear of her life; she did not have the strength to overpower her supposed kidnapper, nor the money and resources to remove herself from the situation as it worsened. Would things have turned out differently if she had had access to a stronger support system? Atwood dangles the possibility before us gracefully, but we can never really be sure.
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