Alias Grace is a fictional account of a real-life person, Grace Marks, who lived in Canada in the nineteenth century and was convicted of murder at the age of sixteen. Young and pretty, the case of Grace Marks received a lot of publicity. She was imprisoned in 1843 and released in 1872, after being granted a pardon. However, her co-conspirator, James McDermott, had been executed.
Margaret Atwood, well-known Canadian novelist and poet, uses available material to recreate the life of Grace. It is a fast-paced account, in which Margaret makes Grace the narrator. The novel depicts the inequality between classes, the poor conditions of Grace’s origins, her life as a maid, and the death of her dearest friend. It brings in other aspects, such as hypnotism, and the general society and culture of nineteenth-century Canada.
Was Grace innocent or guilty? And if guilty was her poverty an alleviating circumstance? As Atwood says in her afterward, ‘The true character of the historical Grace Marks remains an enigma’. Overall, an interesting and well-written book.
