I have 100 pages left to read, and I feel like it’s never going to end! It’s a feeling I’m not used to, because the book is actually really fantastic and fascinating, but I feel like every 30 pages or so I have to put it down and walk away to absorb what I just read. I think I’ve been at this for about 6 months now… hopefully I’ll finish soon… I’m excited to see how this ends.

A novel within a novel within a novel, and the innermost nested one is a bizarre science fiction fable. As the story of two sisters and their family’s fall from grace slowly unravels, the reader is drawn in, ensnared in the interspersed recounting of an illicit love affair, during which the lovers spin out the sci fi story. This is an intricate and enthralling book.

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It took me a while to get into this book. The writing style is a bit old-fashioned for my liking and I don’t like sci-fi therefore the “alien” story did not appeal to me at all. However, three quarters into the story it got interesting and the ending made up for it.

I kept thinking I had read this, but really I think I was thinking of Alias Grace. In any case, I’m glad I have now. It took me a little while to get into it, but overall, I love the literary conceit of mise en abime, and the more levels one can work into a novel, the better, I think. And there are three levels here, or four, really, one sort of only referred to in passing, perhaps. But it’s an engaging portrait of an era, captured through lush descriptions of manner and dress, as well as the heartbreak of misplaced love and lust – for persons, for money, for whatever.
The characters are the beautifully flawed but entirely likeable sort Atwood favours, except for her villans, who are not so much portrayed as vile as dismissed. And a bittersweet ending, like life, instead of books.

Well worth its place on all those lists of bests.

I confess, I like reading ‘junk’ – books to entertain me, to conjure up wild impossibilities and leave reality behind.

Every once in a while, though, I like to read something of better quality, shall we say. Something that leaves me thinking, “Wow”. Like this.

It’s not a fast-paced book. It winds stories within stories, hinting at half-told secrets, misleading you through omission. I felt I knew what was going on, but the way it was told leaves you with doubts: have you got the wrong end of the stick? And even if you ‘guess’ right, the revelation, finally, is still shocking – just to see it finally written down, to understand those consequences that open the book.

Laura Chase kills herself by driving off a bridge; we follow the tale through the eyes of her sister, Iris, writing as an old woman knowing her own death is inevitable, and soon. And so we weave between stark reality of old age, memories of childhood, Iris puzzling over her recollection of Laura, trying to understand this person who shaped her entire life.

Interspersed, we read extracts of a novel within a novel, a love story as piercing as it is dark and murky and real, inexorably entwined with snippets of a wild science fiction tale the lovers create… to escape into? To give themselves something for themselves.

I loved it. It sucked me in and left me with chills.

i’m on page 26 & am completed hooked.

been an interesting read so far.

Another extremely enjoyable read from Atwood, skillfully weaving three seemingly disparate storylines spanning both ends of a life together.

I read this book on my pda! A little hard to get into and understand at first, but then once into it I really enjoyed it!

Beautifully crafted and very moving, as Atwood is wont to be. It felt wrong reading this on sunny days, though.

personally, i was disappointed that the sci-fi novel-within-a-novel ended so soon, but overall this was a really good read. i predicted the twist at the end pretty early, but watching everything unravel was still rewarding.

Just bought this. I read about Margaret Atwood in the New Scientist this week, so decided it was time for a change from Hiaasen and Brookmyre….. I’ll let you know how I get on.