69. Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

It has to be said that I'm two and a half years late reading this book and Danique, a good friend of mine who I went to University with, will probably scold me for it, since she's written an essay or come to think of it; it might've been her thesis about this book. Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace was discussed during my MA course which focused on biographies and autobiographies - Shaping the Truth. 

I missed this discussion and I hadn't read the book, so I read it now. After reading Hilary Mantel's novel, I was very impressed by Atwood's descriptiveness. Even though she doesn't always use all the usual punctuation and she switches from storytellers quite often, I never felt confused and I felt to be under skin of the main character in the novel, which is a big word of praise from at the moment after disliking the books I've read lately.

Alias Grace is based on the true events of Grace Marks' life. She was a young woman in Canada in the 19th century, who may or may not have murdered her employer Mr. Kinnear and his lover and servant Nancy Montgomery. In this novel she recounts the story (as she remembers it) to a young doctor who is interested to see whether she is insane, while trying to avoid to question as to her innocence. 

I see why my professor chose this book, because as a 'biography' it does have a few noteworthy sentences. The below quote for example shows what always annoys me about autobiographies. I always think that they are always only partly true, because you cannot simply remember all these intrinsic details of your life: 

"It is the only memory she seems to have forgotten, so far; otherwise, every button and candle-end seems accounted for. But on second thought, he has no way of knowing that; and he has an uneasy sense that the very plenitude of her recollections may be a sort of distraction, a way of drawing the mind away from some hidden but essential fact (...)" (Atwood 215)

Not to forget the fact that when you think back on your own memories they are always muddled but what others have told you and little white lies you told yourself to remember something positively. This means of course that you can't actually remember the actual event as it actual occurred:

"What should I tell Dr. Jordan about this day? Because now we are almost there. I can remember what I said when arrested, and what Mr. MacKenzie the lawyer said I should say, and what I did not say even to him: and what I said at the trial, and what I said afterwards, which was different as well. And what McDermott said I said, and what the others said I must have said, for there are always those that will supply you with speeches of their own, and put them right into your mouth for you too (...)" (Atwood 342)

 But why would I quote these things and write this blog when Atwood herself words it so perfectly in her Afterword:

"I have of course fictionalized historical events (as did many commentators on this case who claimed to be writing history). I have not changed any known facts, although the written accounts are so contradictory that few facts emerge as unequivocally 'known'." (Atwood 541)