Just thirty pages in and struck by Atwood’s manipulation of story, one based on a murder purportedly committed by then sixteen year-old Grace Marks of her employer Mr. Kinnear and his housekeeper/mistress Nancy Montgomery. Magic in the opening lines:
Out of the gravel there are peonies growing. They come up through the loose grey pebbles, their buds testing the air like snails’ eyes, then swelling and opening, huge dark-red flowers all shining and glossy like satin. Then they burst and fall to the ground. (p. 5)
Already we have the image, beauty and tender life pushing through hard gravel. The temporary finding a place to poke through the forever. Color and life doomed to death. Great way of putting it.
Atwood gives us this opening statement from Grace herself, now twenty-four years old and resident of the penitentiary, working at the governor/warden’s home, revealing why she is there. That’s the background from the protagonist’s point of view as well as an almost admitted sense of regret:
(…) this time it will all be different, this time I will run to help, I will lift her up and wipe away the blood with my skirt, I will tear a bandage from my petticoat and none of it will have had happened. (p. 6)
Atwood covers much ground in the next few pages, using various techniques to tell the story. She follows with a very brief scene of the execution of James McDermot, Grace’s partner in the crime, and a short list of prison rules and punishment. A page of line drawings of the defendents, and then, a poem:
Grace Marks she was a serving maid,
Her age was sixteen years,
McDermtt was the stable hand,
They worked at Thomas Kinnear’s. (p. 11)
The poem is obviously not great poetry, but it is written in the narrative style of the time, and tells the story through to the hope of Grace’s repentence. What a clever way to give us the details quickly through the use of this form.
In the next chapter we hear from Grace of her present situation, that of day maid at the prison governor’s house, and we learn from her some of what the governor’s wife’s days are like, her friends, and brilliantly interwoven in this are glimpses of Grace’s possible self. From a note she finds signed "Nancy" her thoughts return to Nancy Montgomery:
(…) and I must say the first time I saw that, it gave me a fright, although of ourse it was a different Nancy. Still, the rotten bones. They would be, by now. Her face was all black by the time they found her, there must have been a dreadful smell. It was so hot then, it was July, still she went off surprisingly soon, you’d think she would have kept longer in the dairy, it is usually cool down there. I am certainly glad I was not present, as it would have been very distressing. (p. 27)
I like this lady, Grace. She’s cool, practical. And, with the visit of a doctor to the house for the purpose of measuring Grace’s head to study the criminal mind, Atwood gives us an intrigueing hint of Grace’s past:
And then I see his hand, a hand like a glove, a glove stuffed with raw meat (…) and I know I have seen a hand like that before (…) Because it’s the same doctor, the same one, the very same black-coated doctor with his bagful of shining knives. (p. 29)
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology