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	Barnes & Noble.com - The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood - Paperback
		This boy, the blind assassin of both novels' titles, is meant to carry out this plot by killing and taking the place of a young mute girl, who is the next day to be slain by the king in the aristocracy's ritual of sacrifice.
		The blind assassin and the mute sacrificial maiden of the man's tale may be allegorical figures for the lovers of Laura's novel, who may in turn be figures for Laura herself and Alex Thomas, the radical who may have been her lover.
		The Blind Assassin is both entertaining and intelligent, both a page-turner and a work of literature, absorbing the reader with its vividly rendered plot and characters while slyly posing difficult questions about the nature of narrative itself.
	search.barnesandnoble.com /booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=tI55j2qBQl&isbn=0385720955&itm=1 (2522 words)

	Reading Group Guide \| The Blind Assassin By Margaret Atwood (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
		Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms.
		Atwood has said that the form of The Blind Assassin was influenced by early twentieth-century collages, in which newspaper excerpts were glued onto canvas and then painted around and over--thus framing two ways of representing reality, each of which contradicted the other but also complemented it.
	www.readinggroupguides.com /guides/blind_assassin.asp (985 words)

	WorldNetDaily: A blind assassin, a mute virgin and Margaret Atwood (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		WorldNetDaily: A blind assassin, a mute virgin and Margaret Atwood
		A blind assassin, a mute virgin and Margaret Atwood
		Interspersed as a separate narrative, we have another novel, also titled "The Blind Assassin," which Iris tells us is the work of her late sister published after her death and becoming a cult novel to later generations.
	www.worldnetdaily.com /news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=18300 (889 words)

	Blind Assassin, Constant Reader Discussion
		The Blind Assassin is a tale of two sisters, one of whom dies under ambiguous circumstances in the opening pages.
		I did try, in the beginning, to determine who the blind assassin of the real story was supposed to be, and although in lifestyle he most closely resembled Alex, I couldn't make anyone really fit the parameters.
		Topic: THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Margaret Atwood (16 of 26), Read 29 times Conf: Reading List From: Ann Davey davey@tconl.com Date: Sunday, September 23, 2001 12:43 PM Sherry, Laura took Iris's car and committed suicide right after Iris told her that Alex was dead and revealed to her that they had been lovers.
	www.constantreader.com /discussions/blindassassin.htm (3630 words)

	Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin - Fantastic Reviews book review
		Second, one of the characters of The Blind Assassin writes for the pre-War science fiction and fantasy pulp magazines, and included in this novel are the plots of several of his genre stories.
		The narrator of The Blind Assassin is Iris Griffen, an irascible octogenarian in the present day, with little to do to pass the time but reminisce about her youth and her family, now in decline but once wealthy industrialists who dominated their small Canadian hometown.
		In deliberate contrast to Laura Chase's Blind Assassin, Iris's chapters are excruciatingly ponderous, a long and slow review of her youth with all the interesting parts omitted.
	www.geocities.com /fantasticreviews/blind_assassin.htm (1099 words)

	Inlibris Bookstore - The Blind Assassin : A Novel by Margaret Atwood (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		The Blind Assassin is a beautiful example of Margret Atwood impeccible skill as an author.
		The heroine of "The Blind Assassin" is a complex woman and her struggles to get by bring out our empathy.
		The problem with "The Blind Assassin" are the speed bumps created by the periodic insertion of excerpts from a science fiction novel that one of the characters wrote.
	www.inlibris.com /bookstore/main.pl?mode=books&m=1&asin=0385720955 (1310 words)

	Mise-en-abyme: Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin :: The Compulsive Reader :: A Haven for Book Lovers
		The Blind Assassin begins with 82 year old Iris Chase Griffen, looking back at her sister's death 50 years ago, and on that level, the book presents a fairly straight memoir.
		Merged with Iris's memoir is Laura's fiction, The Blind Assassin, the story of a rich married woman and her affair in the 1930s with a young communist/pulp science fiction writer on the run.
		The characterisation in The Blind Assassin is exquisite.
	www.compulsivereader.com /html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=100&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 (2097 words)

	Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
		Margaret Atwood's novel The Blind Assassin shows that choosing this second path is by no means easy, since followers of the first tend to be vigilant, ruthless and deadly.
		The Blind Assassin is Atwood's tenth novel, and in Britain it won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction.
		The Blind Assassin, although employing some complex stylistic manoeuvres, sticks firmly to the domain of common sense so the reader is always certain of the frame within which they are reading.
	www.rambles.net /atwood_assassin01.html (606 words)

	Atwood - The Bilind Assassin
		For some, it's a way to distance themselves from painful memories while mythologizing mundane triumphs and travails; for others, it's a means of discovering their own identities, a way of connecting the dots in their lives, of turning random points of light into something resembling a starry constellation.
		Much of what ensues in ''The Blind Assassin'' is unapologetically melodramatic: in addition to several suicides in the Chase family, there are intimations of child abuse and intra-family adultery, not to mention loads of scheming, manipulation and intrigue.
		Compelling in its lurid way as "The Blind Assassin" the novelette may be, it pales in comparison to the virtuosic storytelling on display in "The Blind Assassin" the novel.
	www.msu.edu /~lschaef/bookclub/pastpicks/atwood.html (776 words)

	The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
		In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious.
		Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms and clichés of the 1930s and 1940s, The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience.
		The Blind Assassin proves once again that Atwood is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of our time.
	www.randomhouse.ca /catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780553752922&view=print (544 words)

	The Old Maid's Tale / A woman looks back on life at 83, as Margaret Atwood crossbreeds the historical novel with pulp ...
		For her capacious, audacious 10th novel, ``The Blind Assassin,'' Atwood returns to the first half of the 20th century and to a woman's struggle not to be erased.
		``The Blind Assassin'' opens with a newspaper report on Laura's death in 1945 when the car she is driving plunges off a Toronto bridge.
		The story of ``The Blind Assassin'' is in its telling, and the title applies as much to its aging, troubled narrator as anyone else.
	www.sfgate.com /cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/09/03/RV82905.DTL (917 words)

	Review \| The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
		The primary narrator in The Blind Assassin is Iris Chase Griffen, 83 when we first encounter her, though younger in flashbacks as she tells her story.
		It is to the late Laura that authorship of the novel The Blind Assassin is attributed, with a posthumous publication date of 1947.
		Since the Chase sisters are born around the time of World War I and the story climaxes days after the end of World War II, a lot of the color in The Blind Assassin is set in the tumultuous period between the Wars.
	www.januarymagazine.com /fiction/blindassassin.html (929 words)

	Compare Prices and Read Reviews on The Blind Assassin at Epinions.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		The Blind Assassin is a complex novel composed of two alternating parts: the narrative of the central character, Iris Chase Griffen, and the posthumously-published novel written by Iris’s sister, Laura Chase.
		The Blind Assassin begins with reports of Laura’s teenage suicide, and as the work unfolds, we learn that there are many other family secrets to sort through.
		It is difficult to summarize The Blind Assassin, both because of the intricacy of its intertwined stories and because much of its power lies in several surprises appearing at the end of the book.
	www.epinions.com /content_65715474052 (937 words)

	Amazon.fr : Blind Assassin : Livres (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		The narrative collision in Margaret Atwood's 2000 novel is between the biographical recollections of Iris Chase Griffen and the novel "The Blind Assassin" written by her sister Laura Chase, who committed suicide in 1945.
		"The Blind Assassin" is not allegorical, mainly because it is to personal a tale to have that broad a meaning for its readers.
		I usually devour novels at a frantic pace but that proved impossible with "The Blind Assassin." This was one of those novels where you would finish a part, which alternate between the narrative and the novel, and mull over what had just happened and how the pieces were coming together.
	www.amazon.fr /exec/obidos/ASIN/0747549370 (2036 words)

	The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		This story, set in a fantasy past of Oriental decadence, eventually centers on a young assassin who falls in love with his intended victim, a temple girl who has had her tongue cut out for the glory of God.
		Like most of Atwood's work, The Blind Assassin begins with the delicate deliberation of an ocean liner and moves with the deceptive speed of a ship at sea–seeming slow until we look at the waves splitting on the bow.
		Upon publication of The Blind Assassin Atwood's publisher, Doubleday, put up a page for her which may still be available.
	www.dancingbadger.com /bassassin.htm (1525 words)

	Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service: `The Blind Assassin,' by Margaret Atwood; Doubleday.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)@ ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		Margaret Atwood begins her new novel, "The Blind Assassin," with a death.
		Laura Chase, sister of Iris Chase Griffen of Toronto whose husband is a wealthy industrialist, drives off a bridge in May 1945.
		Two years later, Laura's novel, "The Blind Assassin," is published.
	www.highbeam.com /library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1G1:65057307&refid=ip_encyclopedia_hf (222 words)

	IMHO \| Blind Assassin
		But with Blind Assassin Atwood does what she did so well in Amazing Grace; she gives us a picture of unique women's lives in good old historic Ontario; a time and place in which being unique and female could lead to a world of trouble.
		Also, she does an excellent portrayal of Ontario's own brand of tight-lipped puritanical censure for people who are foolish enough to do any number of silly things, like fall in the river, or get themselves killed in a war.
		In Blind Assassin two of the disapproval-worthy are the Chase sisters, Iris and Laura, who are raised in a gilded cage, on account of their elevated status as descendants of their town's main employer.
	www.imho-reviews.com /print.php?id=18_0_1_0_M (373 words)

	Amazon.ca: The Blind Assassin: Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		And memory isn't much of a salve either, as Iris points out: "Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them." Yet Atwood never succumbs to postmodern cynicism, or modish contempt for her characters.
		On the contrary, she's capable of great tenderness, and as we immerse ourselves in Iris's spliced-in memoir, it's clear that this buttoned-up socialite has been anything but blind to the chaos surrounding her.
		"Blind Assassin" is narrated by an elderly dowager Iris Chase Griffen and it is, most broadly, a reminiscence of her complicated life as the daughter of a Canadian industrialist--a button manufacturer.
	www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/0770428827 (1304 words)

	Atwood, Margaret: The Blind Assassin (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		The other two of the three stories stem from Laura's acclaimed novel "Blind Assassin," parts of which are interspersed.
		The killers are children who have been blinded by their enforced work knotting beautiful rugs.
		The "killers" are blinded by love, family, duty, jealousy, vengeance, and other inescapable, socially defined tyrannies that comprise the fabric of life.
	endeavor.med.nyu.edu /lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/atwood12268-des-.html (545 words)

	The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
		Iris Chase Griffen is nearing the end of her life and is determined to set down her version of the stories and scandals that have long swirled around her and her family.
		In a narrative that spans the twentieth century, Iris describes a childhood of wealth and privilege darkened by her mother's early death and her father's alcoholism and ultimately destroyed when the economic and political turmoil of the Depression forces her father to close the family's once-thriving factories.
		Alternating with Iris's reminiscences and wry commentary on her current situation are passages from Laura's scandalous novel, The Blind Assassin, about an upper-class married woman and her lover, a hack writer and a political radical, who spins a science fiction tale (also entitled The Blind Assassin) during their clandestine meetings.
	www.randomhouse.com /catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385720953&view=rg (1079 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: The Blind Assassin: Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		Conjuring a world of prosperity and misery, marriage and loneliness, the central enigma of Iris's tale is the death of her sister, Laura Chase, who "drove a car off a bridge" at the end of the Second World War.
		Allowing a glimpse into a clandestine love affair between a privileged young woman and a radical "agitator" on the run, this version of The Blind Assassin is an overt act of seduction: the exchange of sex and story about an imaginary world of Sakiel-Norn (a play with the potential, and convention, of fantasy and sci-fi).
		With the intelligence, subtlety and remarkable characterisation associated with Atwood's writing (from her first novel, The Edible Woman through to the best-selling Alias Grace), these two stories play with one another--sustaining an uncertainty about who has done what to who and why to the very end of this compelling book.
	www.amazon.co.uk /exec/obidos/ASIN/1860498809 (1044 words)

	Salon.com Books \| "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood
		One is Laura's posthumously published novel of dystopia, the futuristic story of a city's demise at the hands of a blind assassin and his mute lover.
		"The Blind Assassin" is one of those tricky novels that features a near-distasteful hero or heroine (think Ignatius in "A Confederacy of Dunces," or Harry in "Rabbit Redux").
		Because Iris has moved through her life in a fog of others' expectations, incapable of identifying her own needs and responsibilities, the impulse to grab her by the shoulders and shake her is strong, particularly when she sleepwalks into an arranged marriage and passively permits her sister's institutionalization in a mental hospital.
	archive.salon.com /books/review/2000/09/12/atwood/print.html (1083 words)

	Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin
		I just finished her 38th book, The Blind Assassin, which won the 2000 Booker Prize for Fiction and the International Association of Crime Writers Dashiell Hammett Award.
		Published posthumously in 1947, Laura’s novel, The Blind Assassin tells the story of a socialite and her mysterious lover, a radical leftist on the run.
		No names are ever used, and Atwood cleverly pulls off the frequent use of “he” and “she” as the sole identifiers, a tricky undertaking that could become cumbersome but never does.
	www.suite101.com /article.cfm/crime_stories/102577 (459 words)

	Crafty Business - Discussion: The Blind Assassin
		Haven't had the time yet to go back through and double check all the instances, but obviously, there was the constant mention of the red brocade on the bed (and it seemed to keep proliferating!) in The Blind Assassin.
		I also know for certain there was red brocade at Avilion - it's what their father used to dress up as Santa, but I can't remember if it had been draperies (this is what seems to come to mind) or if the girls had also worn red brocade, or both.
		I am one of those awful readers who, without really trying, sees the "surprise" ending coming about fifty pages in, and I agree that the flipping back and forth between stories got really irritating, esp. as it seemed to be only a device for propelling a reader to the conclusion, without being done particularly well.
	discuss.gromco.com /snl/tz13472.html (2005 words)

	BookLoons Reviews - Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		Blind Assassin is a meticulously developed work of art, of stories within stories.
		The man spins stories in the aftermath of passion, tales set in a world of three suns and multiple moons in the city of Sakiel-Norn, where a blind assassin is assigned to kill a mute sacrifice.
		Note: Blind Assassin was the winner of the Booker Prize, 2000.
	www.bookloons.com /cgi-bin/Review.asp?bookid=29 (691 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Books \| Review \| The Blind Assassin: novels within novels
		In contrast, The Blind Assassin provides specimens of a fictional novel.
		The Blind Assassin is not just the title of Atwood's book; it is also the title of a novel written by one of its characters.
		After the report of Laura's death, we are given the novel's opening under the heading "The Blind Assassin.
	books.guardian.co.uk /review/story/0,12084,1090225,00.html (744 words)

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