Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood's novel Alias Grace deals with the notorious murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Upper Canada in 1843. Two servants of the Kinnear household, Grace Marks and James McDermott , were convicted of the crime. He was hanged and Marks was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Although a work of fiction the novel is based on factual events, Atwood constructs a narrative that sees a fictional doctor, Simon Jordan, playing detective. Although ostensibly conducting reasearch into criminal behaviour, he slowly becomes personally involved in the story of Grace and seeks to reconcile the mild mannered woman he sees with the murder of which she has been convicted.

Alias Grace won the Canadian Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1996.

Some literary critics noted eerie parallels between Marks and a more contemporary Canadian criminal figure, Karla Homolka. In both trials, significant controversy was raised by the question of whether they had actively participated in the murders, or were simply unwitting accessories.

See also Southern Ontario Gothic.