It tells the story of the two sisters, Iris and Laura Chase, born into a wealthy Canadian family during the interwar years. The Great Depression decimates the family's wealth and the sisters realize how useless their education is in a world which denies women their independence. Iris is forced into a disastrous marriage with a villainous industrialist; Laura tries to salvage her independence but is sent away to a booby hatch. They both love a Communist agitator on the lam named Alex.
The Blind Assassin is a story within a story within a story. The aged Iris narrates the events of her youth, interspersed with the science fiction novella written by Laura entitled "The Blind Assassin" and newspaper clippings. The novella tells the story of two lovers who meet in secret and construct a fantasy world to avoid direct conversation about their miserable worlds apart from each other.
In the way that the novel is presented as a body of evidence for the reader to synthesize, its structure reminds me of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. As do the surprise twist endings.
I write this flawed book report - not to review the novel or entice you to read it - but to highlight some of my favorite lines.
In "The Blind Assassin" novella's science fiction story, the protagonist who is literally a hired blind assassin, comes to murder a virgin (who has been rendered voiceless) set to be sacrificed the next day. Instead of killing her, the two desperate people fall in love:
"Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they're forced at spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however - if I may use such an overworked word - miraculous. What we mean by that is, Against all odds.
And so it is, this night.
The blind assassin begins very slowly to touch her, with one hand only, the right - the dexterous hand, the knife hand. He passes it over her face, down her throat; then he adds the left hand, the sinister hand, using both together, tenderly, as if picking a lock of the utmost fragility, a lock made of silk. It's like being caressed by water. She trembles, but not as before with fear. After a time she lets the red brocade fall away from around her, and takes his hand and guides it.
Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.
This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love."
My favorite line is really only the last but the previous paragraphs are also excellent and provide context. I like the idea that two people may be utterly flawed but still able to love; also incapable of communicating in a way the other can understand except through touch. In a world of conflicting voices, of pressures and shoulds, might touch be the only guide? Perhaps on a primal level our bodies tell us things that our minds are unwilling or unable to understand. The mind-body connection with illness is well documented...might it be that way with love?
Regardless, the important lesson is that we need to love even if circumstances are not right because they never will be perfect and life is short. I mean all kinds of love between all people.
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