10 Books To Read After Watching “Alias Grace”

Lately there has been a slight obsession with Margaret Atwood. Specifically, her books. And honestly, after the year that the Canadian born author has had, who wouldn’t be engrossed with her novels of literary feminism? At the beginning of the month, Netflix released all six episodes to the miniseries, Alias Grace – the 8th novel Atwood had published in her writing career (published in 1996). But what is the most remarkable thing about Alias Grace is that this is the second adaptation of Atwood’s novel that has been brought to the small screen in the six months since Hulu’s release of ​The Handmaid’s Tale.

The premise of Alias Grace is chilling. Not because it involves murder, but rather how the elements of the story eerily echo the feminist struggles that was depicted in ​The Handmaid’s Tale. Unlike how Hulu depicted a dystopian society in which fertile women were enslaved to bare children, Netflix goes back in time, focusing solely on the treatment of woman in the mid 19th century. Framed in the form of an elliptical interrogation, Alias Grace opens in 1859, in Victorian Canada, where Grace Marks – a former household servant – has been imprisoned for the 1843 murder of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. The actual killer – or cohort – James McDermott, accuses Grace of using her wiles to manipulate him and mastermind the crime. Grace’s celebrity as a young accused murderer, attracts the attention of a doctor named Simon Jordan to question and hopefully save Grace from life imprisonment. But Simon and the rest of the viewers can’t help but wonder:

Did she actually do it?

As the viewers get further and further into Grace’s story, they learn that a single woman at this point in time is either an innocent virgin or a deceptive whore. Both the novel and in the Netflix miniseries accurately portray how women were treated in the 1800’s, and the manners in which they needed to adapt to survive. While Grace at times seems like the innocent victim she claims to be, viewers catch glimpses of her more manipulative side. So is she actually fully innocent? Is she completely guilty? Or is she a little bit of both? Overall, there is no doubt that Grace is a complex character with many secrets. She is either a convincingly timid child, or a toughened inmate. And in a time when men abused their power over women, sometimes a little manipulation was what was needed just to get by. So if you’re in search of crafty women whose actions may or may not be justified by their crimes, there’s luckily no shortage of books for an engrossing topic like that. And after finishing watching Alias Grace, these women – just like Grace Marks – will seem ambiguous, but also absolutely mesmerizing. 
 
(Note: My suggestion would be to watch The Handmaid’s Tale first before watching Alias Grace in order to compare the two shows). 

#10: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Based upon actual events, this fictional account tells the story of Agnes Magnúsdottir, the last person executed in Iceland in 1830. Agnes has already been convicted of the murder of Nathan Ketilson and Pétur Jónsson and condemned to death for her crime, along with her co-conspirators, Fridrik Sigurdsson and Sigga Gudmundsdóttir. As she awaits her execution, Agnes is housed at a farm in Kornsá, belonging to the District Officer, Jón and his family. At first the family in Kornsá is hostile around Agnes as she helps with the chores around the farm. It is there where she meets with her spiritual advisor, Tóti whom she tells her life story to him and her encounter with Nathan Ketilson on the farm. As her story unfolds, Nathan emerges as a manipulator and as a sexual predator. Agnes’s voice at times feels claustrophobic with tension. With a combination of the appalling Icelandic winter and the muggy conditions of the Kornsá farm, Burial Rites has a colder, more precise tone compared to Alias Grace. But like Atwood’s writing, Kent creates a striking character in Agnes. An ambiguous and perplexing young woman who, even in the face of death, cannot be pinned down.  

#9: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The first part of the novel centers around Nick Dunne and his wife Amy’s marriage. According to Nick, on the morning of their fifth anniversary, Nick wakes up to find that Amy has disappeared from their home in North Carthage, Missouri. As the days pass with no sign of Amy, the police and the media position their attention on Nick as the sole suspect for murder. The narration shifts when Amy chronicles her relationship with Nick through past diary entries, describing how her and Nick’s seemingly charmed romance begins to deteriorate. As the evidence against Nick continues to pile up against him, Nick continues to deny that he had any involvement with Amy’s disappearance. Yet, as the police find more and more clues to Amy’s disappearance, Nick becomes increasingly concerned that Amy knew more about some of his secrets than she let on. As a result, he tries not to reveal that his marriage was troubled or any other details that might implicate him. But did he actually have a hand in Amy’s disappearance? Just like Alias Grace, we get interesting scraps of information from the main characters. We think we know and understand them, until something comes out of left field to unhinge it all.

#8: In the Woods by Tana French

In 1984, in the charming little town of Knocknaree, Ireland, three kids went into the woods, and only one of them came back alive. Two decades later, another girl is found dead in the woods. And – coincidentally – the lead detective on the case, Rob Ryan, is the surviving boy who escaped from the woods twenty years ago. Rob has no memory about the day his friends went missing. The only thing he knows is that he emerged from the woods wearing nothing but a torn t-shirt and bloody sneakers. With his partner, Cassie Maddox, he and Cassie investigate the murder of the girl, Katy Devlin. But who would want to kill this twelve-year-old girl with a passion for dance? Could it be her father, Jonathan, who has a sketchy past? Mark, the archeologist who seems just a little too attached to the woods? Was it the mysterious man in a tracksuit who was seen at the crime scene by Damien, another archeologist, and Jessica, Katy’s twin sister? Or was it Sandra? As Rob and Cassie delve deeper and deeper into the case, Rob tries to remember what happened those twenty years ago, only for his repressed memories to come up with an unexpected clue.

#7: The Silent Wife by A.S.A Harrison

The Silent Wife is a tale of a long-term relationship gone bad with no possible way of fixing it. Jodi Brett and Todd Gilbert have been together for twenty years, but Todd’s infidelity lead to the demise of his relationship with Jodi. Todd has been unfaithful throughout his relationship, but Jodi has managed to look the other way in order to maintain the upscale lifestyle to which she has become accustomed to in their Chicago highrise. But when Todd’s latest indiscretion becomes pregnant, Todd leaves the well-ordered home he has shared with Jodi to live in an apartment with his now expecting mistress. When Todd’s lawyer orders Jodi to vacate the condo, Jodi is in disbelief that Todd would be capable of removing her from the home and life they shared for so many years. But when one of Jodi’s friends offers to assist her for a price, Jodi can’t help but be tempted by the proposal for revenge against Todd.

#6: Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois

Just like the Amanda Knox case, Cartwheel is a suspenseful and haunting novel of an American foreign exchange student arrested for murder. When Lily Hayes arrives in Buenos Aires for her semester abroad, she is instantly enchanted by everything she encounters: the buildings, the food, but especially the handsome, elusive man next door. Nothing was going to stop Lily from having the time of her life, not even her boring American roommate Katy. But then five weeks into her study abroad program, Katy is found brutally murdered in their shared home. In between the revealing deceptions and the suspicious evidence of DNA, Lily is the prime suspect in the eyes of the media, her family and even in the man who seeks her conviction. So who exactly is Lily Hayes? And what happened to her roommate? No two readers will ever agree.   

#5: The Passenger by Liza Lutz

Lisa Lutz’s acclaimed thriller begins with a woman on the lamb after her husband’s body is found at the base of the stairs. Did she really do it? It’s hard to tell until the final pages. All the reader knows is that Tanya DuBois doesn’t exist. At least not anymore. As “Tanya” watches her life recede into the rearview mirror, we know that she has gone by many alias: Amelia Keen, Debra Maze, Emma Lark, Sonia Lubovich, or a girl called only Jo. She is known as “Amelia” when she meets Blue, another woman with a life similar to her own. But their pasts and futures clash as the body count rises around them. Lutz does a fantastic job capturing Tanya’s fragility hidden underneath her tough exterior. By creating a trust between the narrator and the reader, there is something about Tanya’s character that forces the readers to view her in an unlikely favorable light.

#4: Moral Defense by Marcia Clark

In the second book in the Samantha Brinkman series written by Marcia Clark (yes, you read that right. That Marcia Clark, from the O.J. Simpson trial), Samantha is not concerned about guilt or innocence. Her prime interests is making sure that her clients walk. She understands that a crime can sometimes be committed for personal reasons, business reasons, pleasure or justice. Whatever the reason, Samantha’s duty is to keep her clients free. In Moral Defense, a personal chord is struck when she meets Cassie Sonnenberg, an adopted teenager accused of fatally stabbing her brother and father and accused of being responsible for her mother clinging to life in the hospital. Suddenly, Sam is facing her biggest challenge yet. And as it turns out, the maybe-murder and her attorney have more in common than Sam ever could have imagined.

#3: The Girl Before by Rena Olsen

When Clara is ripped from her husband and daughters as law enforcement raids their home – and told by her husband to keep her mouth shut – Clara finds herself depressed and in denial of the reason for her arrest. Initially, Clara refuses to cooperate – she insists that her marriage has been defined by love, rather than control and refuses to accept any information to the contrary. Through flashbacks, the readers are introduced to what appears to be a finishing school, where young girls are isolated from men and taught obedience and various “womanly arts,” or face violence or expulsion. The psychological manipulation, and Clara’s memories all contribute to a heart-rending description of a “good-girl” who, though behaving as she is told to her atrocious milieu, becomes guilty of unspeakable acts. Clara deludes herself into believing that the rules that govern her world are justified, and can only be obeyed. Yet, the more Clara finds out about herself, the more it becomes possible that the past could ruin her life as she knows it.

#2: Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

As Ani relives the trauma of her freshmen year of high school, she begins to realize some parts of her life were not best for her even though they seemed perfect on the surface. At her affluent school, Ani wanted to be part of the popular crowd. Just when she thinks her dreams are coming true when she gets invited to a party, three boys, Peyton, Liam and Dean, get her drunk and sexually assault her. Still struggling to be accepted by the crowd, Ani refuses to report the rape. As Ani enters adulthood, she discovers that her fiancé, Luke was not the person whom she thought he was. Luke does not believe Ani had been raped. Furthermore, he also doesn’t believe that Ani should participate in an upcoming documentary about her old high school. But in a twist, the readers learns that the subject of the documentary is about a mass school shooting that happened when Ani was a student. What happened? And does it all connect back to Ani on that one fateful night?

#1: In the Blood by Lisa Unger

Lana Granger has told many lies about where she comes from and who she is that the truth is cloudy. With a few months to go until she graduates from college, but with her trust fund almost tapped out, Lana takes a job babysitting a troubled boy named Luke. Luke is manipulative, and is accustomed to controlling the people in his life. But in Lana, he might’ve just met his match. Or has Lana met hers? When Lana’s friend, Beck mysteriously disappears, Lana resumes her lying ways – to friends, to the police and to herself. But the police have a lot of questions for Lana when the story about her whereabouts the night Beck disappeared doesn’t match with the eyewitness accounts. Lana would do anything to hide from the truth, but it might not be enough. Especially if someone else knows about Lana’s lies and is dying to reveal them. 

So, do you think you know what happens? Only way to find out is the read the books!