My book club, Storie delle Sorelle, met in late February to discuss ALIAS GRACE, by Margaret Atwood. We’ve read both fiction and non-fiction before but this was our first fictionalized story based on actual events. None of us were sure what to expect. A novel about young maid who helps murderer her employers? In the 1800s? In the wilds of Canada? And she spends most of her life in prison? What, exactly, were we getting ourselves into?To make things fun, our hostess suggested that we each bring a food that would make us feel better if we were in prison. Offerings included potato soup, cheesy bread, sausage/spinach bread, chocolate chip cookie pie, ice cream, and wine. Yeah, I’d say that would make for a nice prison meal!
We shouldn’t have worried about the book though – most of us loved it. Atwood was able to realistically speak in the voice of a 19th century woman, fully immersing us in the time period in a way that many authors cannot. The details of daily life were both fascinating and appalling to our modern sensibilities and they always felt authentic.
The story wasn’t really about the details of the murders themselves, as we worried it would be. Rather it was about the circumstances that allowed the murders to happen: class lines, gender issues, sexual repression, poverty. We appreciated the ways these problems were woven into the story rather than being presented as an overt lesson to the reader.
Toward the end of the meeting we discussed the few known facts about the real Grace Marks, the “murdering maid” of the story, and tried to figure out what might really have happened. Needless to say we didn’t come to any solid conclusions.
This book definitely gave my club a lot to talk about. The six of us really enjoyed reading it, much to our surprise. We found out later that two members who couldn’t make it to the meeting actually did not like the book. We’d have loved to have them there to compare notes with, but maybe at our next meeting we can get them to share their reasons ….
Next time we’ll be discussing THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett, so stay tuned!
--Heather Johnson, Storie Delle Sorelle Book Club
