Alias Grace

"So this is the story of a house servant, who was convicted of murdering her employer and his housekeeper. In the novel, she is hired out of prison as a domestic servant and claims not to remember anything about the murder. She begins to recount her life to this psychiatrist who is trying to determine whether she deserves a pardon. Through her sessions with the doctor, we explore her traumatic past. The central tension is whether she is guilty, although at the same time it almost doesn’t matter. The novel, which I love, subverts the whodunnit trope; you’re not trying to discover the truth, you’re trying to uncover her character. I really remember the dreamy quality of it, and my frustration over the ambiguity of the case. I was very drawn into the complex psychology of it, and what it was trying to do. I don’t know if that’s what you liked about it? Yes, she is really cunning in the way she talks to the psychiatrist. Is she a blameless victim of her circumstances? Or is she using her sex to manipulate the doctor? And which would I admire more? I love what it says about each reader—why it frustrates you and from which angle will tell you something about yourself. I think it’s really intelligent. Obviously Margaret Atwood is a genius, but this is possibly my favourite of all her novels. It has something special, dug deep inside, under all these layers, and you don’t know what it is. It’s one of those books you can re-read forever and keep changing your mind about it, which is very special. I haven’t talked much about the setting. But I guess that mattered to me least as I was reading it. It’s set in that time, but it feels almost timeless, which I really love. Yes, almost a psychological thriller . There’s something about ‘ historical fiction ’ that makes it sound like it is meant to be boring. But it can be set in a period without being limited to any rules. A lot of the novels I have chosen are, I guess, character studies. First, I have to hear the voice of the character. Also, the voice of the novel. Those are not necessarily the same thing. I do the research before, after, or during the writing. But I have to hear the voice first. Of course, it helps if I’ve been doing research, and I can hear the language they used, what was in style at the time. It’s interesting, too, to research the previous time period, to see what the character must have absorbed as a child, and incorporate that. There is no one way to do it. I just go all over the place, to be honest. There’s always a point at the beginning where I’m so overwhelmed by information that I feel like I’m drowning. But, hopefully, with time, I know what to use. The Victorian period was so packed that sometimes it felt like I was just doing exposition. This happened, then this other thing happened. I’m interested in how trauma shapes identity, and how familiar trauma can feel throughout different historical periods. The trauma of being a woman through different historical contexts."

"I guess I wanted to pick a Canadian book, because I am from Canada and I’m a pretty big Margaret Atwood fan. I think probably Alias Grace is my favourite Margaret Atwood book. I ask myself why I like this book so much. I like historical fiction. I like non-fiction. Yu Hua’s To Live is historical fiction – of China during the cultural revolution. Alias Grace is historical fiction set in Canada around the mid-1800’s. I think this story actually takes place just a bit before Canada becomes a country. Yes. For me, reading this book and hearing about a world where Toronto wasn’t this big city but basically a settlement, where people got around in horse-drawn buggies, I found was a lot of fun and informed me about the history of my own country. The other thing that I really admire about Margaret Atwood’s writing in this book is that she stays true to historical fact. This woman, Grace Marks, the main character, really was a person. She was put into prison for her role in the murder of a farming family. Just as a matter of historical fact, we don’t really know much more than that. Was she guilty, was she innocent, was she possessed? This is a key question around which the whole story revolves. Margaret Atwood got me completely involved in the story. Grace Marks tells the story in the first person, we’re inside her head, yet still by the end of the story I don’t know if she did it or not. It would’ve been so easy for Margaret Atwood to decide one way or the other, and then tell it from the perspective of either the murderess or the wrongfully accused. “Sometimes, we just need to do that: read often and read good books” Margaret Atwood does something brilliant in this novel with her female characters. It’s set in 19th century Canada where women had a very defined place in society. Yet this woman, Grace Marks, has a strength and an authority over some of the men in the book. Even though she’s a convicted murderess in this penitentiary she has a power and a sway. I didn’t read it for a lesson. I read it for pleasure. Sometimes, we just need to do that: read often and read good books. But if there is a broader lesson, here is this story woven out of such a tiny slice of history. It isn’t one of the great crimes of history – it really was obscure. Even so, Margaret Atwood weaves this magisterial tale around it. This book is beautiful proof that everybody has a story that could break your heart. Everybody has a story that you could write a great novel about. Young people should go through life and try not to throw away any moment, no matter how insignificant – life is all down to the love, care and curiosity with which we handle it."

"This is the book that has had more impact on my career than any other. It was the book that I myself wanted to write, essentially, and I’ve read it five times. It’s a fictionalised account of Grace Marks, a 16-year-old Canadian girl who was convicted as part of the murder of her employer. It explores whether Grace is guilty, whether she’s evil, whether she’s insane, or whether she is simply a victim of circumstance. Throughout the novel, she remains an enigma. What I find so extraordinary about this story is that Margaret Atwood didn’t deviate from the historical record so far as it existed. She says in the afterword to the book that where there were gaps in the record she felt free to invent, but generally she kept to the actual story, and yet she has managed to create something which is open-ended, hugely entertaining, and compelling—that’s why it was made into a Netflix series. It’s what I set out to do in my debut novel, The Unseeing . The novel I ended up with is very different, but Alias Grace has been the most important book in instructing me on how to write and what I want to write. I think so. If you’re writing in the crime genre today, you are expected to fill certain expectations, because readers are very savvy. They read a lot of crime fiction, they’ll be expecting twists, they’ll be expecting red herrings, they’ll be expecting certain aspects of the genre. Margaret Atwood doesn’t really do any of that—because she didn’t think she was writing a crime novel, she thought she was writing a Margaret Atwood novel. And yet the book is utterly fascinating and compelling. I think that is a real skill."

"I’ve always been a massive fan of Margaret Atwood, and Alias Grace is one of my favourite novels. It’s based on the real-life story of Grace Marks, one of Canada’s most notorious murderers. In the mid-19th century, when she was only 16, she and a stable hand called James McDermott were accused of killing their employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his pregnant housekeeper and mistress, Nancy Montgomery. McDermott was hanged for the murder, and Grace was given life imprisonment and shuttled between prison and an asylum. Atwood tells the story largely through Grace’s version of events, but also through the perspective of Dr Simon Jordan, who is a young doctor in the emerging field of psychiatry. He is trying to help Grace recover her memory of the killing, because she claims to remember nothing. He begins by asking for her life story, and she takes him from her poverty-stricken childhood to the events leading up to the murders and her attempted escape with McDermott afterwards. Eventually, Grace’s memory appears to return under hypnosis, or is she just telling Dr Jordan what he wants to hear? The ending is shocking and ambiguous. The novel presents a variety of sources. There is Grace’s story and Dr Jordan’s. There are letters, newspaper clippings, poems, and the published confessions of the accused. Atwood builds up the narrative in layers, which is rich and satisfying. The recurring image of a patchwork quilt becomes a perfect metaphor for the novel’s central theme: the multiplicity of truths embodied in Grace’s character. You never know whether she’s a naïve girl manipulated into violence, or a remorseless and calculating killer. I think the near impossibility of arriving at a single truth is one of Margaret Atwood’s enduring themes. Another theme in the book is that the real imbalance between men and women isn’t about economic or physical power, it’s about credibility. Whether it’s Grace in 19th-century Toronto or, say, an actress accusing Harvey Weinstein, the woman’s story is always a little bit in doubt. One of the things I love about historical fiction is that it highlights issues that are still relevant today. Alias Grace reads like a novel, even though there are nonfictional sources. I think one of the things that makes it so vibrant is Grace’s tone. Sometimes it’s innocent and sometimes it’s sly, sometimes it’s very wise, and sometimes it’s stoical. Alias Grace never feels like nonfiction because of all the ways Atwood plays with Grace’s tone. Dr Jordan has his own narrative that starts with him interviewing Grace, and then it kind of billows out into his life. It’s unexpected and gripping, and it reads like fiction. By including all these points of view and factual as well as imagined sections, Atwood is building a picture, not telling the reader what to think."