The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

 

Iris Chase has always been rich.  As a girl she and her sister, Laura, were the daughters of the wealthiest man in town who owned the button factory where most of the townspeople worked.  When the factory failed Iris was basically bartered to another wealthy man who saved the factory but controlled and abused Iris.  She was whisked away from Laura and isolated by her husband, Richard, and his sister.  

Laura didn't fare any better.  Just entering her teen years when Iris was taken away, she lived in the big mansion with her increasingly remote father.  After she died, Richard brought her to live with he and Iris and started his campaign to control her.  When that didn't work, he had Laura hospitalized in a mental hospital that served as a prison.  Laura got out and disappeared.  She turned up later and gave Iris the book she had authored before stealing Iris' car and driving it off the bridge.  She was twenty-five and became a celebrity author after her death.  Her book detailed an illicit affair between a young girl and her poor lover.

Now Iris is an old woman and she is looking back at her life.  She writes in her journal everyday and along with her recounting of her daily life are excerpts from Laura's novel.  As the journal progresses, the secrets that this family kept are revealed in layer after layer of deceit and cruelty.  

This novel won the Booker Prize in 2000.  The reader is drawn into Iris' life and the sacrifices she made to try to have and keep a family and find love.  As the secrets are revealed one after the other readers will feel tenderness toward Iris, fury at the abuse and shock at what occurred.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.