Plot summary: there was a murder in Canada of a man and his housekeeper which was attributed to a male and female servant in the family and there was implications that some type of lover's triangles and other polygons was tied up in it. The man was sentenced to death and the woman was put in an insane asylum. This much is, I believe, historically accurate. The novel is about the female servant and a psychiatrist who is studying her and looks at both her current life and her childhood and the events leading up to the murder (mostly as she is telling about it to the psychiatrist).

This is the Atwood novel I've read that reminds me most of Handmaid's Tale, though I'm having a hard time saying why. It is her most recent book, so it isn't that she was just in a particular phase in her writing. I think that it is getting to see what someone who is locked up and forced into servitude for life does in order to survive. That theme is strong in both books. And the repercussions of deviating from the expectations those that are dominating you. It's also got a bit of cool mystery novel to it.

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