Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood (Virago, £6.99 in UK)

Is the clever, knowing Grace Marks a killer or a victim? Is she depraved? Or is she merely crazy? Margaret Atwood takes the facts…

Is the clever, knowing Grace Marks a killer or a victim? Is she depraved? Or is she merely crazy? Margaret Atwood takes the facts of a brutal crime of passion which shocked and intrigued mid-19th century Canada and constructs a spilt narrative of extraordinarily adroit technical skill. Short listed for last year's Booker Prize, Alias Grace is showcase for Atwood's coolly formidable array of skills, particularly her intelligence, irony and black humour. It is an extremely physical book, in which people and things are described with a relentless precision. The book operates on several levels.

Essentially a thriller, it is also a social history in which Atwood contrasts the lives of poor women working in domestic service with the easier existences enjoyed by their more socially favoured sisters who married well; another theme is the balance of power between men and women. An astonishingly skilful technical performance, and a superlative exercise in storytelling, yet this is a cold, cold book.

Eileen Battersby

Eileen Battersby

The late Eileen Battersby was the former literary correspondent of The Irish Times