Symbol and Structure
I think my favorite thing about this book (which I wound up liking a lot more than I expected to) was how Atwood mirrored the structure of the book, with its multiple narrative truths that only barely intersect, in the image of the two picnic photographs, with only a single hand at the corner to…

I thought:

Apologizing in advance for the tangential nature of this, but am I alone in thinking that the BA sections are not excerpts, but the whole novel?

In general, I didn't mind spending time with Iris, but her endless resentments could get tiresome at times. For example, she's snide about her father skimping on their education because she and Laura are girls, and then a few pages later she's snide about him treating them like boys when he gets them a proper tutor.

I think you're onto something MJ, the pulp sections of BA are all fueled by an exotic, almost Orientalizing, other. I can't, right off, think of a better reason for Atwood to fold in the whole pulp pastiche. I mean couldn't Alex have written Detective fiction, for instance. But Oriental Romance (ala Conan) is a…

We certainly seem to have all of "The Blind Assassin" as far as I could tell. And it very neatly fills in the absence that Iris tells us is present in her first person narrative. I would have found it hard to believe that either the steamy/squalid romance or the pulp SF outline (it's not really a novel as we've got…

I liked the ending (I was very glad he didn't shoot himself). I also thought the Grand Cosmo "really" existed.

I like the Gatsby comparison. I find Daisy, the green light at the end of the dock, to be almost as much of a cipher as Martin's wife (Drat! I can't even remember her name at the moment, although it *has* been a while since I finished the book, cough, :). More a marker of attainment than a real person (at least…

Funny you should mention Epcot:) I thought of Disney immediately when Martin began creating his enclosed worlds. As an inveterate Disney-phile I loved the long description of the Cosmo.

Oh God! Kentucky Avenue. Makes me weep every time. It may be the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.

I'm surprised that Fatti (and others) only found the book overweeningly didactic in the last few pages. I liked the intertexuality and connections between the sections; in fact, I love that sort of thing. The way the whole back half of the book felt like a series of tonic cadences as the reader anticipates how this…

I thought Luisa Rey was dead
Or at least I thought she might be. Since, by that point, I didn't know what rules Mitchell was playing by, I thought "The First Luisa Rey Mystery" might be the first book in a series about a ghost detective. I mean, why not, right?

I liked Ewing a lot. But I'm a sucker for Colonial Adventure stories.

I mentioned this above, but I'm going to relentlessly :) plug it down here too. If you liked Frobisher, I suspect his voice is based on Saki's Reginald stories (you can find them a Project Gutenberg). They were an obvious influence on Wodehouse.

I suspect "trashy but enjoyable" isn't as easy as it looks.

Frobisher was a real hoot. I was impressed with Mitchell's note perfect imitation of Saki's Reginald, so much so that I didn't even notice how close Cavendish was to him in terms of style. The fact that they share the same soul makes that kind of clever, but then, Luisa and Sonmi don't seem to have "inherited" the…

Oh, damn. I used the word "really" 4 times.

I felt relief at finishing fewer sections than you did (i.e. I liked more of them), but even so, finding 2 out of six sections to be borderline unreadable is not a good average. I really liked the overall structure (even if it is partly lifted from _If on a winter's night a traveler_). I really liked the ways the…

Yep. I concur. This was Glenn in a very creepy, but very ingenious fashion, trying to help Sally out.

I'm pretty sure the money was already in the envelope in his desk when he first comes in the "morning after". (Unless my memory is complete shot… which is always possible).