Alias Grace - Hardcover

Atwood, Margaret

4.04

143,348 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408892065 ISBN 13: 9781408892060

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017

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A stunning new hardback edition of Margaret Atwood's classic work of true crime - 'an explosive mixture of murder, sex and class conflict' (Daily Mail) soon to be a major Netflix series

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize

Sixteen years have passed since teenaged Grace was locked up for the cold-blooded murder of her employer Thomas Kinnear and his lover, Nancy Montgomery. Saved from the gallows where her alleged accomplice was hanged, Grace claims to have no memory of the events which changed her life for ever.

Dr Simon Jordan is an expert in the field of amnesia. His objective is to unlock the dormant part of Grace's mind and discover the truth behind one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of all time.

Was Grace an unwitting accessory, or a cold-blooded killer?

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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

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