After having read “The Handmaid’s Tale” & having absolutely adored it, I was curious to dive into another work by Margaret Atwood. Unfortunately, I can’t give as much praise for “The Blind Asassin” I found the story extremely slow-paced (whereas that’s something that never disturbs me in other books), so that it would take you about 1 third into the book to finally get into the story (which is about 220 pages in!) What I did realise though, is that it’s best to read the book as close to in 1 single sitting as possible. It’s only when I fought my way through a couple of hundreds of pages at once, that I got the hook of the story & was more motivated to pick it up to get on with it.

There’s obviously nothing to be said about the style though, it’s absolutely beautifully & immaculately written, Atwood managing to construct one image after the other based on the chosen words as you move on from page to page. The descriptions are so highly visual that your mind can’t help but draw out paintings of scenes without any effort at all.
What did bother me in the style though, was the way of writing without quotation marks. While it wasn’t distracting in “The Handmaid’s Tale”, here, I often found myself asking which character said what & even wondering throughout entire chapters about whom it was written (which only becomes clear in the end, so I wonder if it might have been done intentionally).

All in all, I can’t rate it with more than 2 stars, since I really had to force my way through the book in order to finish it.
Possibly the story line simply wasn’t of my taste, so if a story about 2 sisters, their relations, time growing up & becoming adults, all in the setting of the World War appeals to you, go for it, you might get more enjoyment out of it than I did 😀

★★☆☆☆ (2/5)