![]() ![]() ![]() Catullus’s famous paradox was not meant to describe books, but it neatly sums up my reaction to Margaret Atwood’s pluri-prizewinning novel “The Blind Assassin”. ![]() She falls and falls and never hits the ground'. Stella's daughter tells her sister, `Mama fell off a roof, Mama's falling still. My fall would be endless - endlessly down'. Laura's sister fancies, `there was no floor to my room: I was suspended in the air, about to plummet. Both novels include a pair of sisters whose mother dies when they are young, leaving the elder girl to take care of the younger children with absent or unknown fathers and someone very old, near to their own death, who loved ![]() Both Stella and Laura act as nurses, and fall prey to unprincipled men. Narration from Laura's sister - all out of chronological sequence just as the cause of Stella's fall is sought through Ullmann's novel by a variety of narrators, with excerpts from a video, all simililarly out of chronological order. The Blind Assassin is concerned with finding out why Laura fell, with newspaper reports given, excerpts from a novel quoted, and passages of 1 0 Stella Descending by Linn Ullmann ( Ka圜liff) Ka圜liff: Laura Chase in The Blind Assassin falls to her death from a bridge over a ravine, just as Stella falls to hers from a roof. ![]()
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