My Favourite Book

It's hard to choose, because I love so many books, but I think my favourite book is Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. I love Margaret Atwood, she is a total master of her craft and her writing is breathtaking and transformative. I love how many of Atwood's work features science fiction (The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake), a genre not often seen in literary fiction (I know Atwood doesn't like her works labeled as science fiction, but I think they are). Her works are challenging, and intellectual, and just so good to read.

In Alias Grace Atwood tackles a different genre—historical fiction, taking on the true-life tale of the notorious nineteenth-century murderess Grace Marks. (As an aside, I usually hate historical fiction. I like to read biographies and non-fiction history books—and I think the real history is intensely interesting as it is, it doesn't need to be tarted up like it is in historical fiction. For a while I was doing a project I called Booking The Booker, where I was trying to read through all of The Booker Prize winners. I stopped when Hilary Mantel won not once, but twice for her historical fiction series about Thomas Cromwell. I think I got a third of the way through Wolf Hall before I had to return it to the library and never bothered to check it out again. I love reading books about that period of history, and think that you can find non-fiction books that are so much better, like ones by Alison Weir and Lady Antonia Fraser. As an aside to the aside—don't you think The Booker Prize gets it so wrong so often?)

Grace Marks is a lowly maid, convicted of murdering her employer Thomas Kinnear and Thomas's housekeeper, and mistress, Nancy Montgomery. Much of the novel is Grace recounting her life story to a psychiatrist commissioned to determine if Grace should be pardoned of her crimes. At it's core Alias Grace is a gripping murder mystery, but it's also a haunting tale about perception, identity, innocence, guilt, truth, and sex. It examines immigrant life in Victorian times and domestic servitude. It's an engrossing piece of writing and weave's in Atwood's common themes of women's roles and how women are perceived and defined by others. It's quiet and sensational all at once. I think it is truly a masterpiece.

CBC, starting tonight, is airing a six-part miniseries adaptation of Alias Grace, made by the inimitable Sarah Polley. I'm excited to check it out!

What is your favourite book? It's hard to pick, isn't it :)

XOXO