Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
I think I did notice the recurring branch/tree thing, and the water thing, but didn't make anything of them. They never seemed to go anywhere and I didn't have the enthusiasm to stretch myself looking.
Especially given my own reaction to the writing, it's tempting to suggest that the entire book served no real purpose. There are no valid/useful conclusions we can draw from a fictionalised version of the events, but equally the author has been constrained in what she can say through the characters because she has tried to remain bound by the real events. There was nowhere she could go with this, and so it went nowhere.
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I'm starting to feel sorry for Margaret Atwood! If you take this to its logical extreme, does any work of fiction serve a real purpose? (I'm considering this book to be fiction because that's what it is, though based on facts, rather than being a biography of Grace Marks.) For me, a work of fiction that isn't light-hearted fluff purely for entertainment, is an examination of the human condition.
I think it is reasonable to say that Atwood took the bare known facts and imagined a scenario that wasn't too far-fetched where Grace might or might not have been an active participant in one or both murders. She considered why Grace might have acted as she did if she was innocent of committing the murders, and I think the scenario is plausible. She was young, she was afraid, she couldn't see what to do to stop McDermott, and so on.
But Atwood also wrote in a way that we simply do not know for certain whether Grace was innocent or guilty, and I rather liked that.
ETA: Crossed in the post with Darryl.