Memories and Reconstrual in Alias Grace

This chapter explores the earliest Atwood publication under consideration in this book, Alias Grace (1996). In a similar way to The Blind Assassin, Alias Grace is a novel which draws on strategies of repetition and fragmented storytelling, raising questions about the lines between fact and fiction, and of the authenticity and reliability of authorship. The stylistic exploration of Grace Marks’ voice outlined in this chapter examines how Cognitive Grammar’s concept of ‘reconstrual’ (Langacker in Cognitive grammar: a basic introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008) can elucidate the linguistic and conceptual mechanisms that give rise to these central themes, and which govern reader attention in the revelation and concealment of significant storyworld details. As a storyteller, Grace repeats and overreports the same events, while omitting and obscuring the facts of the crime she relates. It is argued that the reconstrual operations in the descriptions of key scenes, objects and events form the basis of Grace’s fragmented, patchworked and, ultimately, uncooperative storytelling style. The stylistic choices of the retold accounts are central to the novel’s categorisation as an ‘anti-detective’ novel (Ingersoll in Stud Nov 35:543, 2003), which neither confirms nor denies her culpability.