Word: atwood
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Billy Hutchinson, a senior spokesperson for the Progressive Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, and the Honorable Alex Atwood, member of the Social Democratic and Labor Party and of the Belfast City Council, spoke before an audience of about...
...formidable and sometimes forbidding Margaret Atwood has turned a notorious Canadian murder case from the mid-19th century into a shadowy, fascinating novel. Alias Grace (Doubleday; 468 pages; $24.95) is less combative and ideological than such earlier Atwood novels as The Handmaid's Tale and The Robber Bride. That's not a drawback. There's a teasing, unknowable mystery at the heart of the story, which is the same one faced by jurors in Toronto in the 1840s: to what extent was Grace Marks, a pretty, nearly 16-year-old servant girl, guilty of the murder of her employer, Thomas...
There, eight years later, novelist Atwood takes up her story. Early in her stay Marks had panicked at the sight of a doctor--the same one, she concluded, who had dissected McDermott--and screamed uncontrollably. She was removed to an insane asylum--"mad as a snake," it was said--and subjected to a regime of cold baths and strait waistcoats. She endured this and was returned to the prison. Staying sane here, she says to herself, is like hanging over the edge of a bridge: you aren't moving anywhere, but it takes all your energy. A young doctor visits...
This is a brilliant impersonation. Atwood has saturated herself in the social attitudes and intellectual currents of Canada a century and a half ago. She is scrupulous in not pretending to know the whole truth of Grace Marks. Who, the author notes, was at last freed from prison after 29 years. And who immigrated to New York State and there disappeared from sight...
BORN: Nov. 5, 1934, Addison EDUCATION: Michigan State U, B.A., 1957; U of Delaware, M.S., 1959 FAMILY: Wife, Bonnalyn Atwood; four children RELIGION: Congregationalist MILITARY: Air Force, 1959-61 OCCUPATION: Dairy farmer POLITICAL CAREER: Michigan House, 1979-83, Senate, 1983-92; U.S. House, 1992- ADDRESS: P.O. Box 20142, Lansing...