Alias Grace

Atwood, Margaret

ISBN 10: 0001053612 ISBN 13: 9780001053618

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1997

Synopsis

Sixteen years after being locked up, at the age of sixteen, for the bloody murders of her employer and his housekeeper, Grace Marks is examined by Dr Simon Jordan, an expert in amnesia.

As the days and weeks pass Simon tries to prise open the memories Grace claims to have lost and reveals a life of love and betrayal, poverty and abuse, drawing the listener in to the rooms of Grace’s mind.

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.

Review

“Diana Quick works miracles with Atwood’s dream-like prose and a cast of thoroughly unsympathetic nasties.”
Irish Times 30/8/97

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0001053612
• ISBN 13: 9780001053618
• Binding: Audio Cassette