ALIAS GRACE, by Margaret Atwood

Historical Fiction - 5 stars


In 1843, 16 year-old Grace Marks was convicted of her part in a pair of grizzly murders.  Some say she is guilty, others say she's innocent.  Grace says she can't remember.   In the new era of mental illness study and spiritualism, her death sentence is commuted to life in prison.   Well researched and written in a style that represents Victorian literature, but without the heaviness of period novels.  And then there is Margaret Atwood's turn of phrase that takes the ordinary and twists it into something both familiar and new: The tray is "plain in design, but nonetheless of silver.  A Methodist tray; not flamboyant, but quietly affirmative of its own worth."  And: "I saw only the usual form of light, a light without shape, coming in through the high-up and dirty grey windows, as if cast by no sun and no moon and no lamp or candle.  Just a swathe of daylight the same way all the way through, like lard."  The enigma that is Grace Marks makes for a fascinating read.