Alias Grace

Review ebook Alias Grace

”All the same, Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word—musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.”

Sketches made of Grace Marks and James McDermott during their sensationalized trial.

Grace Marks, at the age of 16 in 1843, was arrested along with James McDermott for the murders of their employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his m ”All the same, Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word—musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.”

Sketches made of Grace Marks and James McDermott during their sensationalized trial.

Grace Marks, at the age of 16 in 1843, was arrested along with James McDermott for the murders of their employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his mistress/housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. The murders were rather sensationalized in Canadian society, what with the cold blooded brutality and the fact that a young, rather beautiful, young woman was involved. McDermott was sentenced to hang, while Marks was saved from the gallows by the spirited defence of her lawyer. She spent the next thirty years of her life incarcerated, first in an asylum and then in a prison.

This story really picked up several years later when Doctor Simon Jordan decided to make a study of her and hoped to unlock some of her missing memories.

See, there were key elements that she didn’t remember about that day that would help him to determine if she was truly a murderess or merely an unwilling accomplice. Jordan was struck by her from the very first moment he met her.

”Her eyes were unusually large, it was true, but they were far from insane. Instead they were frankly assessing him. It was as if she were contemplating the subject of some unexplained experiment; as if it were he, and not she, who was under scrutiny.”

And then there was this observation of Grace by Jordan, as well:

”She’s thinner now, less full in the face; and whereas the picture shows a pretty woman, she is now more than pretty. Or other than pretty. The line of her cheek has a marble, a classic, simplicity; to look at her is to believe that suffering does indeed purify.”

“Other than pretty” implied further depths to her beyond just the surface beauty that captured the imagination of a ghoulish public. He might not know it, but he was already smitten with Grace and in danger of tumbling head over heels in love with her. It is hard to keep control of a series of interviews if you have become interested in more than just the deeds of the individual. As an added distraction every mother in Toronto with a daughter was trying to manufacture ways to throw their pretty daughters in front of this very eligible bachelor.

He was a doctor after all.

”As one season’s crop of girls proceeds into engagement and marriage, younger ones keep sprouting up, like tulips in May. They are now so young in relation to Simon that he has trouble conversing with them; it’s like talking to a basketful of kittens.”

They were fresh, so new they were barely out of the packaging of their youth, and of course virginal. What every man should desire,…right? Well, if one doesn’t mind vacuousness.

As fascinating as Grace’s story is, I found myself becoming even more engrossed with the story of Dr. Simon Jordan and his desire driven demons. His landlady, whose husband had absconded on a bout of debauchery, was also proving to be a damsel in distress as her only source of income became her one lodger. ”Her face is heart-shaped, her skin milky, her eyes large and compelling; but although her waist is slender, there is something metallic about it, as if she is using a short length of stove-pipe instead of stays. Today she wears her habitual expression of strained anxiety; she smells of violets, and also of camphor.”

She was a beauty past her prime, but still she was compellingly sexy. He felt this attraction against his will. There was no hope for a relationship. She was married and too old to ever be acceptable to his family or his class. He was supposed to marry one of those inane, young ladies. ”It would be one way of deciding his fate, or settling his own hash; or getting himself out of harm’s way. But he won’t do it; he’s not that lazy, or weary; not yet.” I can’t help, but think of Newland Archer from The Age of Innocence, who allowed himself to be trapped into what was expected of him, as well. What if Archer had escaped with Countess Olenska?

I still pine for him to escape.

So even though the landlady was forbidden, bruised fruit, he couldn’t help, but notice that…“Her lips are full, but fragile, like a rose on the verge of collapse.”

This was one of the many times when I had to read a Margaret Atwood line many times, rolled it around the surface of my tongue, so that I could taste the sweet, the bitter, and the savory of that beautifully written line.

Dr. Jordan was starting to have odd thoughts and unsettling dreams of murders committed by himself. He started digging in the garden under the pretense of planting a garden, but it seemed, even to his subconscious self, that he was loosening the soil for…the corpse of his landlord if he should return or maybe a stack of bodies of those from which he wished to escape. It would put him on an equal footing with one particular woman. ”Murderess, murderess, he whispers to himself. It has an allure, a scent almost. Hothouse gardenias. Lurid, but also furtive. He imagines himself breathing it as he draws Grace toward him, pressing his mouth against her. Murderess. He applies it to her throat like a brand.”

This novel is based on the true story of Grace Marks. History lost track of her once she was released from prison after nearly thirty years of incarceration. No tombstone is known to mark her grave. She simply vanished into the woodwork of a new America. Atwood has not only brought her to life, but has seamlessly and creatively put words of putty and glue into the missing pieces. I wonder every time I finish an Atwood why I don’t read her more frequently.

Sarah Gadon plays Grace Marks in the series

Netflix has recently launched the first season of a new show based on Alias Grace. It spurred me to get this book read that I had planned to read three years ago. I was wooed by other more pressing books, and what a fool I was. I don’t know how I feel about watching the series. I’m as sure that it is good as I am sure that it will disappoint. I will eventually work up the courage to watch it, but I think I will luxuriate in reverence for the book for a while.

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