"Ten days after the War ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." These are the opening words of Margaret Atwood's intense novel, "The Blind Assassin." As Atwood begins to tell three stories at once, the reader is immediately pulled slowly into the world of Iris Chase and her younger sister Laura.

      The Chase sisters and their parents are the most elite family in Toronto. Their grandfathers made a fortune during the First World War, which catapulted the next three generations of the family into wealth and prestige.

      Iris tells the story in retrospect, nearly 80 years after the events have taken place. She begins with her aching body and unfulfilled life, gaining momentum into the affairs that ruined her marriage, the questionable death of her sister and the family that once was.

      As Iris races to finish the story of her life before death overcomes her, the story of "The Blind Assassin" is also being told. "The Blind Assassin," a book written by Laura's sister before her death is banned by all the bookstores in the small town of Port Ticonderoga. It is the tale of an affair and the imaginary beings of another planet that held it together.

      "The Blind Assassin" becomes the legacy of the Chases and their dark family secret. Why did Laura Chase drive off a bridge? Will Iris finish the story in time? What will happen to the blind assassin of a far away place? The pages unravel and practically turn themselves.

       In addition to this, Atwood compiles newspaper clippings and gossip columns of the Chase family, fitting them in to flow perfectly with the story that Iris tells. The Chase family becomes more than a story, more than characters in a book, but living, breathing, suffering people- with the anger and vengeance to prove it.

      "The Blind Assassin" confirms Margaret Atwood is a survivor of a past generation; one filled with pride, shame and a sense of duty. The pride of Iris as she marries a man she does not love, the duty of her father to his factory workers during the Great Depression and the shame of the family death no one can explain.

      Atwood's is excellent writing at its best. Her choice to place the three plots in an overlap shows her mastery of story telling and ability to realize characters, places and eras. It's not a wonder that she has been hailed as one of the best writers of the new century.

      Atwood throws the reader into a world where appearances are everything and problems within the household are covered up quickly. The reader is let loose amidst a family slowly unraveling into a legend, in an era bursting out of its seams.