Grace Marks is in prison for a murder she does not remember committing.
Review:
This was required reading for a university class I took, I really enjoyed reading it for the class and spent a good deal of time working with it as I wrote an essay. I am an unrequited fan of Margret Atwood, I love everything she has ever written so if you are the opposite I do not recommend this. It is written in Atwood's typical style, well researched with major focus on the characters and flowing (sometimes run-on) prose This novel is sure to take you to a place where you will be unsure what to believe. It is a beautiful piece of Canadian literature and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction.
8/10
Memorable Quotes:
“If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.”
“When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.”
“Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.”
“I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.”
If you enjoyed this I recommend:
Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden
The Stone Angle - Margaret Laurence
Pierre Burton
I work at a Christian school that is pretty conservative. My AP class si going to read this, and I was wondering if there are many overtly sexual scenes that I need to avoid. Could you help?
ReplyDeletethere aren't any overt sex scenes that I can recall. I would be hesitant to try to teach this in a conservative school though. Think really hard about the assignments you will be doing as I can only imagine the standard topics would be a bit difficult in an overly conservative area.
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