Canada

Canada

Bookreview The Blind Assassin By Michelle van leeuwen Margaret Atwood presents a complex and engaging story in her bestselling novel //The Blind Assassin //. Narrated by the book's main protagonist Iris Chase, Atwood spins an engrossing tale of love, deceit and tragedy, set in the backdrop of fictional Canadian  town  Port  Ticonderoga , during the turbulent years of the twentieth century. The story begins with an elderly Iris Chase describing her younger sister Laura's suicide in 1945. From here, she recounts her youth; from being the eldest daughter of fallen industrialist Norval Chase, to her forced and unhappy marriage with her father's rival, Richard Griffin and the events which led up to Laura's suicide. Along the way Iris reveals hidden family secrets and a love affair that time had buried, as she writes a final memoir to her long-lost relative. By presenting the tale from multi-layered perspectives, Atwood sets up different viewing points for the reader, both enriching and complicating the story. The polished newspaper clippings cover only surface, outsider perceptions, yet form the outer layers of the tale. The fondness mixed with raw lust between the two lovers reveal a hidden, alternate dimension which is further elaborated through the man's own graphic, violent and surreal tales. Finally, Iris effectively unites the different plots together into one story, as she narrates the past with a forthrightness and honesty that can only come with old age and exposes the truth about her family history. Throughout the novel, readers are kept in suspense through the subtle clues and hints that Atwood provides, luring the reader into wanting more. The seemingly unrelated tales eventually link together to form the climax of the story - the shocking reason for Laura's death and the point at which Iris's life changes forever. //The Blind Assassin // is not for those who feel like having an easy read. However, for anyone feeling up to a challenge, it is definitely worth the effort. The novel tells an extraordinary tale, by using a breathtakingly original plot and structure, while it also lays bare the destructive things people are capable of and the way love can fight against the sordid, uglier and manipulative side of human nature.

MORLEY CALLAGHAN • 1903-1990 // The Runaway // In the lumberyard by the lake there was an old brick building two storeys high and all around the foundations were heaped great piles of soft sawdust, softer than the thick moss in the woods. There were many of these golden mounds of dust covering that part of the yard right down to the blue lake. That afternoon all the fellows followed Michael up the ladder to the roof of the old building and they sat with their legs hanging over the edge looking out at the whitecaps on the water. Michael was younger than some of them but he was much bigger, his legs were long, his huge hands dangled awkwardly at his sides and his thick black hair curled up all over his head. I’ll stump you all to jump down,' he said suddenly, and without thinking about it, he shoved himself off the roof and fell on the sawdust where he lay rolling around and laughing. 'You're all stumped,' he shouted, 'You're all yellow,' he said, coaxing them to follow him. Still laughing, he watched them look­ ing down from the roof, white-faced and hesitant, and then one by one they jumped and got up grinning with relief. In the hot afternoon sunlight they all lay on the sawdust pile telling jokes till at last one of the fellows said, 'Come on up on the old roof again and jump down.' There wasn't much enthusiasm among them, but they all went up to the roof again and began to jump off in a determined, desperate way till only Michael was left and the others were all down below grinning up at him and calling, 'Come on, Mike. What's the matter with you?' Michael longed to jump down there and be with them, but he remained on the edge of the roof, wetting his lips, with a silly grin on his face, wondering why it had not seemed such a long drop the first time. For a while they thought he was only kidding them, then they saw him clench ing his fists. He was trying to count to ten and thcn jump, and when that failed, hè tried to take a long breath and close his eyes. In a while the fellows began to jeer at him; they were tired of waiting and it was getting on to dinner-time. 'Come on, you're  <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: NL; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"> yellow, do you think we're going to sit here all night?' they began to shout, and when he did not move they began to get up and walk away, still jeering. 'Who did this in the first place? What's the mat­ ter with you guys?' he shouted. But for a long time he remained on the edge of the roof, staring unhappily and steadily at the ground. He remained all alone for nearly an hour while the sun like a great orange ball getting bigger and bigger rolled slowly over the gray line beyond the lake. His clothes were wet from nervous sweating. At last he closed his eyes, slipped off the roof, fell heavily on the pile of sawdust and lay there a long time. There were no sounds in the yard, the workmen had gone home. As he lay there he wondered why hè had been unable to move; and then he got up slowly and walked home feeling deeply ashamed and wanting to avoid everybody. He was so late for dinner that his stepmother said to him sar- castically, 'You're big enough by this time surely to be able to get home in time for dinner. But if you won't come home, you'd better try staying in tonight.' She was a well-built woman with a fair, soft skin and a little touch of gray in her hair and an eternally patiënt smile on her face. She was speaking now with a restrained, passion- less severity, but Michael, with his dark face gloomy and sullen, hardly heard her; he was still seeing the row of grinning faccs down below on the sawdust pile and hearing them jeer at him. As he ate his cold dinner he was rolling his brown eyes fiercely and sometimes shaking his big black head. His father, who was sitting in the armchair by the window, a huge man with his hair nearly all gone so that his smooth wide forehead rose in a beautiful shining dome, kept looking at him steadily. When Michael had fin- ished eating and had gone out to the veranda, his father followed, sat down beside him, lit his pipe and said gently, 'What's bothering you, son?' 'Nothing, Dad. There's nothing bothering me,' Michael said, but he kept on staring out at the gray dust drifting off the road. His father kept coaxing and whispering in a voice that was amaz- ingly soft for such a big man. As he talked, his long fingers played with the heavy gold watch fob on his vest. He was talking about nothing in particular and yet by the tone of his voice he was ex- pressing a marvellous deep friendliness that somehow seemed to become a part of the twilight and then of the darkness. And Michael began to like the sound of his father's voice, and soon he  <span style="font-size: 11pt; color: #535353; font-family: Times New Roman; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; msoansilanguage: EN-GB;">

blurted out, ‘I guess by this time all the guys around here are saying I'm yellow. I'd like to be a thousand miles away.' He told how he could not force himself to jump off the roof the second time. But his father lay back in the armchair laughing in that hearty, rolling, easy way that Michael loved to hear; years ago when Michael had been younger and he was walking along the paths in the evening, he used to try and laugh like his father only his voice was not deep enough and he would grin sheepishly and look up at the trees over­ hanging the paths as if someone hiding up there had heard him. 'You'll be all right with the bunch, son,' his father was saying. I’m betting you'll lick any boy in town that says you're yellow.' But there was the sound of the screen door opening, and Michael’s stepmother said in her mild, firm way, 'If I've rebuked the boy, Henry, as I think he ought to be rebuked, I don't know why you should be humoring him.' 'You surely don't object to me talking to Michael.' 'I simply want you to be reasonable, Henry.' In his grave, unhurried way Mr Lount got up and followed his wife into the house and soon Michael could hear them arguing; he could hear his father's firm, patient voice floating clearly out to the street; then his stepmother's voice, mild at first, rising, becoming hysterical till at last she cried out wildly, 'You're setting the boy against me. You don't want him to think of me as his mother. The two of you are against me. I know your nature.' As he looked up and down the street fearfully, Michael began to make prayers that no one would pass by who would think, 'Mr and Mrs Lount are quarrelling again.' Alert, he listened for faint sounds on the einder path, but he heard only the frogs croaking under the bridge opposite Stevenson's place and the far-away cry of a freight train passing behind the hills. 'Why did Dad have to get married? It used to be swell on the farm,' he thought, remembering how he and his father had gone fishing down at the glen. And then while he listened to the sound of her voice, he kept thinking that his stepmother was a fine woman, only she always made him un- easy because she wanted him to like her, and then when she found out that he couldn't think of her as his mother, she had grown resentful. 'I like her and I like my father. I don't know why they quarrel. They're really such fine people. Maybe it's because Dad shouldn't have sold the farm and moved here. There's nothing for him to do.' Unable to get interested in town life, his father loafed  <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: NL; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"> all day down at the hotel or in Bailey's flour-and-feed store but he was such a fine-looking, dignified, reticent man that the loafers would not accept him as a crony. Inside the house now, Mrs Lount was crying quietly and saying, 'Henry, we'll kill each other. We seem to bring out all the very worst qualities in each other. I do all I can and yet you both make me feel like an intruder.' 'It's just your imagination, Martha. Now stop worrying.' 'I'm an unhappy woman. But I try to be patiënt. I try so hard, don't I, Henry?' 'You're very patient, dear, but you shouldn't be so suspicious of everyone and everybody, don't you see?' Mr Lount was saying in the soothing voice of a man trying to pacify an angry and hysterical wife. Then Michael heard footsteps on the einder path, and then he saw two long shadows flung across the road: two women were approaching, and one was a tall, slender girl. When Michael saw this girl, Helen Murray, he tried to duck behind the veranda post, for he had always wanted her for his girl. He had gone to school with her. At night-time he used to lie awake planning remarkable feats that would so impress her she would never want to be far away from him. Now the girl's mother was calling, 'Hello there, Michael,' in a very jolly voice. 'Hello, Mrs Murray,' he said glumly, for he was sure his father's or his mother's voice would rise again. 'Come on and walk home with us, Michael,' Helen called. Her voice sounded so soft and her face in the dusk light seemed so round, white and mysteriously far away that Michael began to ache with eagerness. Yet he said hurriedly, 'I can't. I can't not to night,' speaking altnost rudely as if he believed they only wanted to tease him. As they went on along the path and he watched them, he was really longing for that one bright moment when Helen would pass under the high corner light, though he was thinking with bitterness that he could already hear them talking, hear Mrs Murray saying, 'He's a peculiar boy, but it's not to be wondered at since his father and mother don't get along at all,' and the words were floating up to the verandas of all the houses: inside one of the houses someone had stopped playing a piano, maybe to hear one of the fellows who had been in the lumberyard that afternoon laughing and telling that young Lount was scared to jump off the roof. <span style="font-size: 10.5pt; color: #414141; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-font-width: 96%;">Still watching the corner, Michael suddenly feit that the twisting and pulling in the life in the house was twisting and choking him. Til get out of here. I'll go away,' and he began to think of going to the city. He began to long for freedom in strange places where everything was new and fresh and mysterieus. His heart began to beat heavily at the thought of this freedom. In the city he had an uncle Joe who sailed the lake-boats in the summer months and in the winter went all over the south from one race track to another following the horses. 'I ought to go down to the city tonight and get a job,' he thought: but he did not move; he was still waiting for Helen Murray to pass under the light. For most of the next day, too, Michael kept to himself. He was up-town once on a message, and he feit like running on the way home. With long sweeping strides he ran steadily on the paths past the shipyard, the church, the railway tracks, his face serious with determinarion. But in the late afternoon when he was sitting on the veranda reading, Sammy Schwartz and Ike Hershfield came around to see him. 'Hello Mike, what's new with you?' they said, sitting on the steps very seriously. <span style="font-size: 10.5pt; color: #414141; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-font-width: 96%;">'Hello, Sammy, hello, Ike. What's new with you?' They began to talk to Michael about the colored family that had moved into the old roughcast shack down by the tracks. 'The big coon kid thinks he's tough,' Sammy said. 'He offered to beat up any of us so we said he wouldn't have a snowball's chance with you.' 'What did the nigger say?' <span style="font-size: 10.5pt; color: #414141; letter-spacing: -0.05pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-font-width: 96%;">'He said he'd pop you one right on the nose if you came over his <span style="font-size: 10.5pt; color: #414141; letter-spacing: -0.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-font-width: 96%;">way.' 'Come on, guys. Let's go over there,' Michael said. Til tear his guts out for you.' They went out to the street, feil in step very solemnly, and walked over to the field by the tracks without saying a word. When they were about fifty paces away from the shack, Sammy said, 'Wait here. I'll go get the coon,' and hè ran on to the unpainted door of the whitewashed house calling, 'Oh, Art, oh, Art, come on out.' A big colored boy with closely cropped hair came out and put his hand up, shading his eyes from the sun. Then he went back into the house and came out again with a big straw hat on his head. He was in his bare feet. The way he came walking across the field with Sammy was always easy to remember because he hung back a little, talking rapidly, shrugging his shoulders and rolling the whites of his eyes. When he came close to Michael he grinned nervously, flashing his teeth, and said, 'What's the matter with you white boys? I don't want to do no fighting.' He looked scared. 'Come on. Get ready. I'm going to do a nice job on you,' Michael said. The colored boy took off his big straw hat and with great care laid it on the ground while all the time he was looking mournfully across the field and at his house, hoping maybe that somebody would come out. Then they started to fight, and Michael knocked him down four times, but he, himself, got a black eye and a cut lip. The colored boy had been so brave and he seemed so alone, licked and lying on the ground, that they sat down around him, praising him, making friends with him and gradually finding out that he was a good ball player, a left-handed pitcher who specialized in a curve ball, and they agreed they could use him, maybe, on the town team. Lying there in the field, flat on his back, Michael liked it so much that he almost did not want to go away. Art, the colored boy, was telling how he had always wanted to be a jockey but had got too big; he had a brother who could make the weight. So Michael be­gan to boast about his Uncle Joe who went around to all the tracks in the winter making and losing money at places like Saratoga, Blue Bonnets and Tia Juana. It was a fine, friendly, eager discussion about far-away places. It was nearly dinner-time when Michael got home; he went in the house sucking his cut lip and hoping his mother would not notice his black eye. But he heard no movement in the house. In the kitchen he saw his stepmother kneeling down in the middle of the floor with her hands clasped and her lips moving. 'What's the matter, Mother?' hè asked. Tm praying,' she said. 'What for?' 'For your father. Get down and pray with me.' 'I don't want to pray, Mother.' 'You've got to,' she said. 'My lip's all cut. It's bleeding. I can't do it,' he said. Late afternoon sunshine coming through the kitchen window shone on his stepmother's graying hair, on her soft smooth skin and  on the gentle, patient expression that was on her face. At that mo­ ment Michael thought that she was desperately uneasy and terribly alone, and he felt sorry for her even while he was rushing out of the back door. He saw his father walking toward the woodshed, waiking slow and upright with his hands held straight at his side and with the same afternoon sunlight shining so brightly on the high dome of his forehead. He went right into the woodshed without looking back. Michael sat down on the steps and waited. He was afraid to follow. Maybe it was because of the way his father was walking with his head held up and his hands straight at his sides. Michael began to make a small desperate prayer that his father should suddenly appear at the woodshed door. Time dragged slowly. A few doors away Mrs McCutcheon was feeding her hens who were clucking as she called them. 'I can't sit here till it gets dark,' Michael was thinking, but he was afraid to go into the woodshed and afraid to think of what he feared. So he waited till he could not keep a picture of the interior of the shed out of his thoughts, a picture that included his father walking in with his hands as though strapped at his sides and his head stiff, like a man they were going to hang. 'What's he doing in there, what's he doing?' Michael said out loud, and he jumped up and rushed to the shed and flung the door wide. His father was sitting on a pile of wood with his head on his hands and a kind of beaten look on his face. Still scared, Michael called out, 'Dad, Dad,' and then he feit such relief he sank down on the pile of wood beside his father and looked up at him. 'What's the matter with you, son?' 'Nothing. I guess I just wondered where you were.' 'What are you upset about?' 'I've been running. I feel all right.' So they sat there quietly till it scemcd time to go into the house. No one said anything. No one noticed Michael's black eye or his cut lip. Even after they had eaten Michael could not get rid of the fear within him, a fear of something impending. In a way he felt that he ought to do something at once, but he seemed unable to move; it was like sitting on the edge of the roof yesterday, afraid to make the jump. So he went back of the house and sat on the stoop and for a long time looked at the shed till he grew even more uneasy. He heard the angry drilling of a woodpecker and the quiet rippling of the little water flowing under the street bridge and flowing on down over the rocks into the glen. Heavy clouds were sweeping up from the horizon. He knew now that he wanted to run away, that he could not stay there any longer, only he couldn't make up his mind to go. Within him was that same breathless feeling he had had when he sat on the roof staring down, trying to move. Now he walked around to the front of the house and kept going along the path as far as Helen Murray's house. After going around to the back door, he stood for a long time staring at the lighted window, hoping to see Helen's shadow or her body moving against the light. He was breathing deeply and smelling the rich heavy odors from the flower garden. With his head thrust forward he whistled softly. 'Is that you, Michael?' Helen called from the door. 'Come on out, Helen.' 'What do you want?' 'Come on for a walk, will you?' For a moment she hesitated at the door, then she came toward him, floating in her white organdie party dress over the grass to­ ward him. She was saying, 'I'm dressed to go out. I can't go with you. I'm going down to the dance hall.' 'Who with?' 'Charlie Delaney.' 'Oh, all right,' hè said. 'I just thought you might be doing noth ing.' As he walked away he called back to her, 'So long, Helen.' It was then, on the way back to the house, that he feit he had to go away at once. 'I've got to go. I 'll die here. I'll write to Dad from the city.' No one paid any attention to him when he returned to the house. His father and stepmother were sitting quietly in the living-room reading the paper. In his own room he took a little wooden box from the bottom drawer of his dresser and emptied it of twenty dollars and seventy cents, all that he had saved. He listened sol emnly for sounds in the house, then he stuffed a clean shirt into his pocket, a comb, and a toothbrush. Outside he hurried along with his great swinging strides, going past the corner house, on past the long fence and the bridge and the church, and the shipyard, and past the last of the town lights to the highway.

He was walking stubbornly with his face looking sol emn and dogged. Then he saw the moonlight shining on the hay stacked in the fields, and when he smelled the oats and the richer smell of sweet clover he suddenly felt alive and free. Headlights from cars kept sweeping by and already he was imagining he could see the haze of bright light hanging over the city. His heart began to thump with eagerness. He put out his hand for a lift, feeling hall of hope. He looked across the fields at the dark humps, cows stand­ ing motionless in the night. Soon someone would stop and pick him up. They would take him among a million new faces, rumbling sounds, and strange smells. He got more excited. His Uncle Joe might get him a job on the boats for the rest of the summer; maybe, too, he might be able to move around with him in the winter. Over and over he kept thinking of places with beautiful names, places like Tia Juana, Woodbine, Saratoga and Blue Bonnets.