Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (Book Analysis) E-Book

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• Kategorie: Bildung
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• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 23

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Unlock the more straightforward side of Alias Grace with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, a thought-provoking novel about the historical figure of Grace Marks, who was convicted of the double murder of her employers Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery in 1843. The novel opens 15 years later, when a young doctor hoping to establish his reputation as a pioneering psychiatrist is hired to interview Grace and ascertain whether or not she is truly guilty. Although the doctor, Simon Jordan, is determined to remain objective, he finds himself helplessly drawn into the narrative Grace weaves about her own past – and increasingly obsessed with his patient and the secrets she seems to be hiding. Alias Grace won the Canadian Giller Prize and was also shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize. It was adapted into a miniseries starring Sarah Gadon as Grace in 2017.

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Leseprobe

MARGARET ATWOOD

CANADIAN NOVELIST, POET AND ESSAYIST

Born in Ottawa in 1939.Notable works:The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), novelThe Blind Assassin (2000), novelOryx and Crake (2003), novel

Margaret Atwood is Canada’s most influential contemporary writer. She studied English Literature at the University of Toronto and later at Harvard, and first received public acclaim as a poet in the 1960s with her collections Double Persephone (1961) and The Circle Game (1966). She has since written over 40 works including novels, short stories and critical essays which have been published around the world, though she is perhaps most famous for her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Her impressive range of work spans science fiction, myth, life writing, and historical fiction, but is largely united by themes of abuse of power and female experience: “My women suffer because most of the women I speak to seem to have suffered”, she has said (Klemesrud, 1982). Atwood’s later work also explores the process of writing, and as an English lecturer she delivered a series of lectures in 2000 entitled Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. She currently lives in Toronto.

ALIAS GRACE

A NOVEL OF HISTORICAL FICTION

Genre: historical novelReference edition: Atwood, M. (2017) Alias Grace. London: Virago.1stedition: 1996Themes: murder, guilt, class conflict, sexuality, dreams, mental illness

Alias Grace is a work of historical fiction based on the vicious double murder of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery in 1843 in Ontario, Canada. Soon after the victims’ bodies were discovered in their cellar, their two servants were arrested; while James McDermott was hanged, Grace Marks, aged just 16, was jailed for life as an accessory to the crime. The trial hears many contradictory accounts of the events, and with Grace claiming to have no memory whatsoever of what took place, a panel protesting her innocence enlists the help of a doctor to ascertain whether Grace is insane and therefore unaccountable. But the more Dr Simon Jordan hears of Grace’s story, the more lost in it, and her, he becomes. Alias Grace was Margaret Atwood’s first foray into the genre of historical fiction after many years of interest in the much-documented Kinnear-Montgomery murder; her novel won the Canadian Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

SUMMARY