I’ve been reading this book for several months now. 3 pages at a time. I’ve let it grown inside me, sipping it as one does to wine, or beer whichever poison you prefer. Those who’ve grown to love this book were right. Atwood is at her best in this novel. Her metaphors and her similes were as they should be. Her imagery and description of things offer no excuse for those who would have thought otherwise.
Assassin is different from the usual fare that I have been reading lately– those I’ve finished in under a day, half a day even. I get the feeling that I’m being smoked like a Havana cigar(those slow-burning cancer dispensers), or a monkey cooked in a slow boiling pot. I didn’t realize I was so into the story until I’m in the middle of the book; when my toilet breaks have become more frequent (and they’ve no relation to whether I’m doing number 1 or number 2). I’ve also taken to bringing the book during my cigarette breaks, looks of ‘oh how pretentious he is’ be damned.
I’ve never had anything that tests the limit of my restraint. I usually go into a piece of literature and let myself go, tear into the story that sort of thing. This time I have to step back every so often for fear of finishing it too early without savoring every group of words or thinking about the effect that the author wanted the reader to experience.
I’m almost at the finish line, I can see the last few pages falling in the next couple of weeks. I already have a theory as to who the unnamed lovers are, and my blood is beginning to get stirred by Winifred and the patronizing Richard Chase.
I sometimes stop to imagine Iris waking up in the middle of the night, go down to the kitchen, bring back the first knife she could get her hands on, and slash Richard’s neck with it while he is sleeping. Then she’d go to Winifred’s room and do the same thing to her for good measure.
But I’m not Atwood and though I wish for these things to happen, I am at her, and the few remaining pages of the book’s, mercy.
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