Margaret Atwood’s novels never fail to amaze me. It’s the amount of research that she does with each of her works that make you feel for the characters more. Alias Grace is a story of an alleged murderess in the 1800s. The book touches on feminism, sexuality, mental health, and spirituality.

There were a lot of elements I loved about the book — the sounds, the poetry, the snippets of historical facts — but the thing that stuck with me the most was the stoicism of the main character. She was proper, blunt, and often in denial of her true emotional state, but her emotions burst out one way or another whether through her words or her thoughts. It was as if Atwood was painting a portrait of Grace Marks on canvas.

There were a few things that seemed questionable to me as people believed things quite easily even without the basis of modern medicine, but perhaps it was intentional. People, after all, believed things more easily at that time, and as mentioned frequently at the beginning of the novel, people loved the spectacle of a murderess or ghosts back then.

It is a great read on an eerie evening with a glass of wine at hand. However, be prepared for the nightmares that will come after reading this book.