Alias Grace - Softcover

Margaret Atwood

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860492592 ISBN 13: 9781860492594

Publisher: Virago Press, 1997

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

From the Publisher:

"Alias Grace has all the pacing of a commercial novel and all the resonance of a classic."
--Washington Post Book World

"A stunning novel full of sly wit, compassion and insight, boasting writing that is lyrical, assured, evocative of time and place, and seductive in its power to engage us."
--Houston Chronicle

"Atwood provides the elements of a walloping good read: suspense, mystery, titillation, and a fully crafted but never ponderous historical milieu."
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Villain or victim, Atwood's Grace is intriguing company."
--People

"A shadowy, fascinating novel."
--Time

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1860492592
• ISBN 13: 9781860492594
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480