The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

Whilst reading this I had several people say something along the lines of "You've never read The Blind Assassin? I thought everyone had." It has the rare distinction of appearing regularly in both critic's favourite lists and popularity polls, so I guess I was a little behind.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It has one of those Russian doll style structures incorporating stories within stories within stories, but it is a mark of Atwood's class that the reader retains the thread of every narrative line and remains equally invested in all of them. Her mastery of such nuts-and-bolts skills as pacing and gradual plot revelation is so good as to become almost invisible.

The outermost "doll", narrated by an elderly woman in the present looking back on her life, is convincing and revelatory, and a moving study of the effects of time on our lives. An alternative title would be the one Martin Amis used for his autobiography - Experience.