Title: The Blind Assassin
Author: Margaret Atwood
Published: 2000
ISBN-13: 9780385720847
Publisher: Anchor Books
[My bones] ache like history: things long done with.
An elderly lady writes her memoirs, revealing dark family secrets. Within those secrets is the book The Blind Assassin, a science fiction novel. Surrounding this novel within a novel is that tale of two lovers who meet surreptitiously and spin yarns.
Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors. I often feel like there’s something just skimming below the surface in her stories, but if I look too hard it will skitter away. And the sheer perversity of this outlandish science fiction tale in the middle of a story of two mystery lovers wrapped in the memoirs of an elderly lady looking back can be fascinating at times.
This was my second read, and found it didn’t hold as well as the first.
I like my protagonists dark and flawed, and Miriam Black is as flawed as they come. I wouldn’t want to be me if my super power was being able to know how the person whose skin I’m touching is going to die and when. That’s agony.
In Blackbird Miriam earns her living by hitching rides and ripping off the drivers. Until she gets saved by Louis, a truck driver who rescues her from four college boys bent on having the good time they think Miriam is offering.
She’s convinced there’s no way to change what she sees, and that makes her even more bitter. What’s the point of knowing if you can’t do anything about it? She’s tried before. But now that she’s met Louis and knows he’s going to die in 30 days saying her name, she has to try again.
And wow, get ready for a tough ride. Blackbirds is rough, coarse and thrilling. Wendig pulls no punches in setting this world up. Miriam isn’t likeable, but she is understandable. And the questions brought up by having a power like hers is fascinating.. Then there’s the question of who is worth trying to save, and who gets to make that decision. There’s some true existential stuff going on in this book.
If Blackbird is about changing the destiny of one man, Mockingbird is about changing the destiny of many. It’s about catching the serial killer preying on the girls who go to school in what is essentially a private, upscale juvenile detention center. And the truly dark secret of this school is shocking, yet unsurprising.
Just as dark as Blackbirds, and possibly even more terrifying, Mockingbird has Miriam confronting her power, her past and the lives of others more deeply than before. How does one come to grips with all the destruction she’s had wreaked upon her and has caused?
Chuck Wendig has joined Richard Kadry in my list of favorite urban fantasy writers. They’re as terrific as their characters are bleak.
