Can you believe we made it through another year? Thankfully, 2022 went down a little smoother than the years prior. As always, I’m amazed – looking back – at how many brilliant books I had the opportunity to read this year. Check out the best books of 2022 (back-list AND new release).

Legitimate Sexpectations by Katrina Marson

I considered myself fairly open-minded and well-informed about sex education prior to reading Legitimate Sexpectations – even though I received little more than the standard “how to use a pad” and “how the sperm penetrates the egg” at school, as far as I can recall. And yet, Marson opened my eyes, again and again, as to how the system as it stands is failing kids (and adults). Most importantly, she doesn’t just identify the problems; Marson outlines potential solutions. I want to thrust Legitimate Sexpectations into the hands of every politician, parent, and school principal. It’s one of the best nonfiction books of 2022, one that has the power to affect real change. Read my full review of Legitimate Sexpectations here.

56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard

Is it too soon for a COVID-19 murder mystery? Catherine Ryan Howard surely hopes not. 56 Days is her latest high-concept crime thriller, set in Dublin in the early days of the city’s first lock-down. It’s a well written, well paced, with tantalising clues and a couple of truly excellent fake-out twists. The couple at the heart of the story barely know each other when they’re forced into the pressure cooker pandemic situation, so the reader gets two (or more?) very different perspectives on the same events. I thoroughly enjoyed 56 Days – so my verdict is that it’s not too soon for a COVID-19 novel, as long as it’s a good one. Read my full review of 56 Days here.

Here Be Leviathans by Chris Flynn

I loved, loved, loved Chris Flynn’s last book, Mammoth – it was one of the best books I read in 2020. So, when I saw he had a new book coming out, I sat up straight and said “yes, please!” in my polite voice. Here Be Leviathans is a collection of nine short stories, narrated by animals, places, objects, and even the (very) odd human. A grizzly bear on the run, a plane seat in a terrifying crash, a genetically modified platypus with the power of speech – each and every one, bizarre and brilliant. Flynn really pushes the boundaries of what we can expect from perspective and it takes a special, rare writing talent to pull it off. Read my full review of Here Be Leviathans here.

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe

If you loved Say Nothing and Empire Of Pain (like I did), you’ll be overjoyed (as I was) to get your hands on a copy of Rogues, a collection of Patrick Radden Keefe’s most celebrated articles from The New Yorker and one of the best books of 2022. These delightfully detailed investigative pieces focus on his favourite subjects: “crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial”. Honestly, I could talk about each and every one of these stories for hours. They’re all masterfully crafted, perfectly balanced, and totally gripping. Read my full review of Rogues here.

The Importance Of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

The farcical premise and witty dialogue have made The Importance Of Being Earnest Wilde’s most enduringly popular play. I can attest to the fact that it’s a lot more fun than The Picture Of Dorian Gray, to boot. Wilde’s wit and insight shines at full strength throughout, and he gently pokes at the social mores and conventions of the time while still maintaining a timeless quality. It’s still beloved by critics, readers, and theatre-goers alike, and I’m happy to join them in singing its praises. It’s a quick read, remarkably clever, and delightfully ridiculous. Read my full review of The Importance Of Being Earnest here.

A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Very few blurbs have grabbed me like that of Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale For The Time Being. It’s a brilliant premise: a writer finds a diary, locked inside a Hello Kitty lunchbox, washed up on the beach in remote coastal Canada. She suspects it to be debris from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. She reads the diary, and finds herself increasingly obsessed with the life and inner world of 16-year-old Nao, the diary’s keeper. I mean… isn’t that fascinating?! I was very pleased to discover that the contents of Ozeki’s novel – one of the best books I read in 2022 – totally lived up to the high, high expectations that blurb set. Read my full review of A Tale For The Time Being here.

Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon

I inhaled Weather Girl in one sitting. The plot is just the right level of ridiculous for a rom-com, the characters are well-developed and well-intentioned, and it has plenty of snort-laughs to offer. Best of all, though, were the steamy and – this is key – realistic sex scenes! Honestly, I wanted to high-five Solomon through the page. For once, rom-com characters experience the actual awkwardness and anxiety of intimacy with someone new, without it ruining the vibe. I gave this one five stars for that alone, one of the best books of 2022 for sure. Read my full review of Weather Girl here.

Sadvertising by Ennis Ćehić

Every so often, a short story collection comes along that changes the game completely. In 2017, it was Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body And Other Parties. I’m pretty confident that Ennis Ćehić’s Sadvertising is next. It’s a collection of short, sharp stories about modern life, technology, and marketing, and one of the best books of 2022. The stories are drenched in black humour, existential dread, and late-capitalist yearning. Some of them are seriously short – as in, 1-2 pages – so they’re quick to read, but deeply resonant. It struck me as I read through the collection that it would be an especially great read for fans of Black Mirror and the Gruen Transfer. Read my full review of Sadvertising here.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace is a fascinating and compelling work of historical fiction, one that tells us just as much about Canadian society and gender roles and the field of psychiatry at the time as it does the crimes of Grace Marks. I also loved the sneaky Gothic elements, which felt very true to form for a story of this nature. This book both satisfied my Murderino curiosity and met high literary standards – no mean feat, as it would have been easy to make this story schlocky and scandalous. Atwood has expressed some troubling views of late, but damn if this wasn’t one of the best books I read in 2022. Read my full review of Alias Grace here.

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler wrote one of my favourite and most-often-recommended books, so I did an excited “squeeee!” when I saw she had a new one coming out. Booth is superbly readable. The pages flow by even when nothing particularly thrilling is happening. Fowler paints intimate portraits of each family member, and the narration includes deft wink-nods to the reader and the future. I was most impressed by the way Fowler kept the day-to-day family drama in the foreground – it struck me as very realistic. My hat goes off to her once again – she’s written an incredible, timely, and provocative novel, one of the best books of 2022. Read my full review of Booth here.

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Of all the great books I read this year, The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks was the first one that came to mind when I sat down to write my list of the best books of 2022. To call it a ‘biography’ feels reductive, as it’s so much more than dates and the facts of a life. It’s a masterpiece of journalistic non-fiction, written by a first-time writer no less. It’s a study of bioethics, a masterclass in accessible science writing, and a testament to the human consequences of scientific discovery. And it’s compelling as heck, to boot! Read my full review of The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks here.

Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix

Setting aside any regards for its contents, Horrorstor is one of the best books of 2022 for design, alone. Look at it! It’s formatted to look like an IKEA catalogue, complete with an order form for a copyright page and product descriptions for chapter headers. It’s honestly one of the most beautiful tomes I’ve ever had the privilege of placing on my shelves. The concept is brilliant, too: haunted IKEA. Doesn’t that just send shivers down your spine? But it’s not all schlocky spooks and jump-scares. This story has hidden depths. Hendrix mines the mind-fuck of consumerism and late-stage capitalism to fuel your nightmares. Read my full review of Horrorstor here.

The Strangers by Katherena Vermette

Despite the (very) heavy subject matter and Vermette’s talent for stark realism, The Strangers is surprisingly readable. The pages fly by! It really exceeded my expectations, and I’m still mulling over it, months later. It’s “a searing exploration of race, class, inherited trauma, and matrilineal bonds that – despite everything – refuse to be broken”. Katherena Vermette is a Red River Métis (Michif) writer, from the heart of Métis nation (Canada), and her heritage permeates this incredible First Nations novel – one of the best books of 2022. Read my full review of The Strangers here.

Calypso by David Sedaris

David Sedaris is a must-read auto-buy author for me now, but I’m forcing myself to take it slow. I make myself read only one book of his at a time, instead of gobbling them all down at once. I started with Me Talk Pretty One Day, then last year Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim, and now in 2022 Calypso – a collection of autobiographical essays that (once again) was one of my best reads of the year. Even though the content of this one is a bit darker in parts, he still writes with the humour and panache that makes him unique. It’s impossible not to be impressed by his mastery of the form, the way in which he can punch in any direction and still manage to remain thoroughly likeable and hilarious. Read my full review of Calypso here.

Odd Hours by Ania Bas

There’s been no shortage of quirky protagonists in recent years, but Gosia in Odd Hours is a different breed. She’s like the Polish love-child of an Ottessa Moshfegh character and a Fredrik Backman character, with a little of a Gail Honeyman character thrown in. The dark, wry humour keeps the story entertaining, rather than wearisome, but it’s far from a light-hearted rom-com. It lives up to the blurb’s promise of “a razor-sharp social comedy about human connection”. The plot builds to an unconventionally happy ending that will delight odd ducks everywhere. Read my full review of Odd Hours here.

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

As with Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings before, Life Ceremony was translated into English from the original Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori – and, once again, she’s done a fantastic job. It’s a collection of “weird, out of this world” short stories that mix “taboo-breaking horror with feminist revenge fables”. Exactly as you’d expect from Murata if you’ve read her work before, it’s full of the joyfully strange aspects of human nature and surreal conceits that will blow your mind. The stories vary in length and complexity, but they’re all fascinating in equal measure. Read my full review of Life Ceremony here.

The Cry by Helen Fitzgerald

I was truly blown away by the TV series The Cry when I caught it by chance on the ABC a few years ago. I didn’t actually realise it was adapted from a book until I came across a copy! Even though the ending was ‘spoiled’ for me, I was still keen to read it – and it was still completely gripping. The Cry is a dark, psychological thriller with a gripping moral dilemma, perfect for anyone who enjoys a story about good people doing bad things. And if, like me, you’ve already seen the show, trust me when I say that it’s still worth a read – it’s one of the best books I read in 2022! Read my full review of The Cry here.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

One of my most recent reads is also one of the best books of 2022 (in my humble opinion). Demon Copperhead is surely destined to become a contemporary classic, an essential component of the burgeoning canon of books about the generation of lost boys in 21st century America. Kingsolver crafts a compelling adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic novel, David Copperfield, transporting the story – complete with abusive parents, neglect, poverty, disease, and loss – to the Southern Appalachian mountains of Virginia. Even Kingsolver’s Uriah Heep character is every bit as creepy as the original, if you can believe it! Read my full review of Demon Copperhead here.

We all have favourite authors – even those of us who don’t read that much or that widely (no shame!). There are certain writers who just capture us, heart and soul, and we pore over every word they’ve written. We call them “automatic buy authors”. Automatic buy authors are the literary equivalent of ride-or-die friends. Here are eleven of mine…

Sayaka Murata

Sayaka Murata has been one of my automatic buy authors since I first read Convenience Store Woman. If I found out she was writing the copy on the back of shampoo bottles, I’d buy them in bulk. She writes taboo-breaking horror, scarily sharp social commentary, and she takes the “sex and death” thing to a whole new level. It’s a shame that comparatively few of her titles have been translated from the original Japanese into English. Ginny Tapley Takemori has done a fantastic job on the three that are available in anglophone markets, though! In addition to the novella Convenience Store Woman, the novel Earthlings is chilling and confronting, and Life Ceremony is a short story collection that will knock your socks off.

Read my full review of Convenience Store Woman here.

Read my full review of Earthlings here.

Read my full review of Life Ceremony here.

Elena Ferrante

My love affair with the world’s most famous living pseudonymous author began, as most do, with My Brilliant Friend. That’s the first in her series of Neapolitan novels, four books that follow the lives of two girls from Naples into adulthood. By the time I sat down with the final novel in the quartet, The Story Of The Lost Child, I felt like I was sitting down to have goodbye drinks with a friend leaving town in the morning. Thankfully, Ferrante has a healthy backlist that I can turn to next, and new novels coming out semi-frequently – the most recent being The Lying Life Of Adults in 2019. They are all translated beautifully into English from the original Italian by Ann Goldstein.

Read my full review of My Brilliant Friend here.

Read my full review of The Story Of A New Name here.

Read my full review of Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay here.

Read my full review of The Story Of The Lost Child here.

Carmen Maria Machado

I first encountered Carmen Maria Machado through the Sydney Writers’ Festival podcast (specifically through her lecture – which seems to have mysteriously disappeared from the internet, otherwise I’d link to it directly – about Law & Order: SVU). She is completely beguiling, scarily smart, and almost-embarrassingly frank. It’s rare that a short story collection comes along that completely changes the game, even rarer when the author manages to back it up with a memoir that does the same thing – and yet, that’s exactly what Machado has done with Her Body And Other Parties and In The Dream House, respectively. Put simply, Machado’s writing will break your brain in the best possible way.

Read my full review of Her Body And Other Parties here.

Read my full review of In The Dream House here.

Ottessa Moshfegh

To be honest, Ottessa Moshfegh needs to be one of your automatic buy authors, if for no other reason than you need to be across what everyone else is gossiping about! She’s one of the most polarising young American writers in the game, as divisive as her unreliable and unlikable protagonists. Her books run the gamut of everything that could possibly be triggering: anxiety, eating disorders, sexual assault (Eileen); depression, self-harm, terrorism (My Year Of Rest And Relaxation); animal cruelty, sadism, and cannibalism (Lapvona)… what’s not to love? Ha!

Read my full review of Lapvona here.

Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe is uniquely talented at exploring underbellies, exposing more of stories we think we “already know”. Reckon you’re across the worst of the Troubles? You need to read Say Nothing. Think you understand the origins and complexities of America’s opioid crisis? Pick up Empire Of Pain. It was a particular pleasure to read a collection of his long-form journalism lately, Rogues, which was like getting to read twelve bite-sized versions of his book in a delicious tasting platter of unsavoury characters. The man is one of the essential automatic buy authors for fans of literary true crime.

Read my full review of Say Nothing here.

Read my full review of Empire Of Pain here.

Read my full review of Rogues here.

Casey McQuiston

Here’s one of my automatic buy authors that’s a bit more fun! Casey McQuiston writes delightful young adult and new adult romances, with fun twists and kooky casts. They’re exactly what you want to take to the beach, or curl up with after you’ve read some traumatising shit. McQuiston burst onto the scene with Red, White & Royal Blue, a what-if romance between a fictional Prince Of Wales and First Son of the United States. It was an instant best-seller and a #bookstagram darling for years! They’ve since followed up with two more zany romances, One Last Stop and I Kissed Shara Wheeler.

Read my full review of Red, White & Royal Blue here.

Read my full review of One Last Stop here.

Karen Joy Fowler

I’ll admit, most of Karen Joy Fowler’s back-list doesn’t excite me that much, but the stuff she’s written most recently has made her one of my automatic buy authors for anything new. Maybe it’s a case of practice makes perfect? I fell in love with We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves – I think it’s the book I’ve recommended to readers more than any other – and then thoroughly enjoyed Booth. I can’t wait to see what she comes out with next, and hey, maybe I’ll dip into her back-list after all to tide me over.

Read my full review of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves here.

Read my full review of Booth here.

Grady Hendrix

I’ll admit, Grady Hendrix became one of my automatic buy authors before I’d even read a single word he’d written. I just love the concepts and designs of his books so much! They’re true collector’s items. Horrorstor is basically a ghost story set in a haunted IKEA store, and the novel is designed to look like one of their iconic catalogues. My Best Friend’s Exorcism looks just like one of the pulpy horror VHS tapes you might’ve rented from Blockbuster back in the early ’90s, and hits all the right notes for a teen horror satire. The list goes on and on; I can’t rest ’til I collect ’em all!

Read my full review of Horrorstor here.

Celeste Ng

If you haven’t read one of Celeste Ng’s novels – or at least seen one of the screen adaptations – you’re really missing out. As soon as you do, she’ll be one of your automatic buy authors, too. Her stories are intense, complex, and superbly crafted. She examines race, gender, motherhood, suburbia, oppression, depression, and more through highly readable dramas that will have you gripped. Both Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere have topped best-seller lists and won awards around the world. Plus, they both have Reese Witherspoon’s tick of approval.

Read my full review of Everything I Never Told You here.

Read my full review of Little Fires Everywhere here.

David Sedaris

All of these automatic buy authors are wonderful, but not one of them can make me laugh like David Sedaris. His memoirs – each and every one of them – have me howling with laughter. Plus, I get to enjoy them twice: once in paperback, and again via audiobook (narrated by Sedaris himself). Of course, my very favourite is Me Talk Pretty One Day, a collection of essays about Sedaris’s North Carolina childhood juxtaposed against his migration to France as an adult. But, at the end of the day, they’re all brilliant. I’m forcing myself to consume them slowly, just one or two a year, and guarding fiercely against the temptation to gobble them down all at once like a greedy little goblin.

Read my full review of Me Talk Pretty One Day here.

Read my full review of Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim here.

Read my full review of Calypso here.

Read my full review of When You Are Engulfed In Flames here.

Catherine Ryan Howard

Catherine Ryan Howard is one of the newest additions to my list of automatic buy authors, but hoo boy, she earned it! Her 2021 novel, 56 Days, was the first of her’s I read, and the first book I read set during the COVID-19 pandemic. It really knocked my socks off! Luckily, I already had another one of her books – The Nothing Man, which sounds even better – on my to-read shelf, and I’m currently on a mission to hunt down the rest of her back-list. Plus, she’s releasing new books at a pretty good clip, about one a year, so I’ll be hitting that “buy now” button pretty frequently.

Read my full review of 56 Days here.

Read my full review of The Nothing Man here.

Surely we’ve all experienced this at one time or another: we turn the final page of a book, put it down, take a deep breath, and say to ourselves “what the FUCK?!”. (Okay, maybe some of us censor the profanity, but the sentiment remains the same.) It can be a good “wtf?!”, a bad “wtf?!”, or a pure confused “wtf?!”, but whichever way it goes it will stick in your mind for days. Here are nine book endings that will make you say WTF?! (And, I can’t believe I actually have to say this, but this list contains spoilers – it is literally about WTF book endings, what the fuck did you think it was going to be?)

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult really takes us on a rollercoaster in My Sister’s Keeper. It starts out with a hum-dinger of a moral dilemma: a thirteen-year-old girl, who was conceived as a genetically matched donor for her sister, sues her parents for medical emancipation. She wants the right to refuse to donate a kidney – which means her terminally-ill sister will surely die. That’s all well and good, and we follow all the ups and downs, but once Anna is finally granted the right to control her body by the judge… she dies in a car crash? Like, immediately after the trial? On the way to the hospital to visit her sister, as if it wasn’t melodramatic enough already! But don’t worry, she’s ‘only’ brain dead, so she ends up donating the kidney anyway. Bring up the ending with anyone who’s read this book and you’ll be treated to a twenty-minute long explanation, culminating in WTF?! (And don’t even mention the movie…) Read my full review of My Sister’s Keeper here.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Well, in fairness, the first few pages of American Psycho will make you say WTF?! But if you can make it all the way through to the end, you’ll be WTF-ing even harder. It might seem like your standard Yuppie greed novel at first, but soon the narrator – investment banker and titular psycho Patrick Bateman – starts describing his violent impulses and how he acts upon them. His violence escalates, and he rapes and murders his way across New York, culminating in a voicemail to his lawyer where he confesses his many, many crimes. Only the next time he sees his lawyer, the guy just laughs? Figures it’s all a joke? Says Bateman is too big a coward to actually do any of that? WTF?! Readers are still arguing today over what that means. Read my full review of American Psycho here.

The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

A contemporary reader will likely come to The Grapes Of Wrath expecting a somewhat uplifting ending. Joke’s on them! It starts with the Joad family, down on their luck, leaving their own farmhouse and migrate to California where they can (fingers crossed) get decent jobs fruit picking to keep the wolves from the door. Their journey across the Dust Bowl is plagued with misfortunes: deaths, overcrowded migrant camps, and family members absconding left and right. You’d think that Steinbeck would have their luck change at some point, point towards a happy ending at least, but NOPE! Things just get worse and worse, until Rosasharn (whose baby was stillborn) ends up breastfeeding a starving man and boy in an abandoned barn during a biblical flood. What – and I cannot emphasise this enough – the fuck? Read my full review of The Grapes Of Wrath here.

My Year Of Rest And Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year Of Rest And Relaxation has one of those sneaks-up-on-you book endings that will make you say WTF?! You know from the outset that the unnamed narrator’s year bombed out of her mind on sketchily-obtained sleeping pills is beginning in late 2000. In New York. That’s fine… but then the months go by, and her friend gets a job in the World Trade Center, and the clues accumulate. Soon, you’re faced with the reality that, yep, the narrator is about to wake up at the exact moment that the whole world gets one hell of a wake-up call. Does her year, with its dramatic end, change her at all? Does the loss of her friend make her rue the days she was rude and mean, and pledge to treat those in her life better? NOPE! Moshfegh really said “fuck redemption” with her whole chest, and left us all out here saying… wait, wtf?!

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

Le Sommet is a former abandoned asylum, recently remodelled as a minimalised five-star hotel for winter wilderness getaways. That’s where Detective Elin Warner finds herself celebrating her estranged brother’s engagement. But, of course, girls go missing, dead bodies show up, and Elin’s spidey senses tingle. After chasing a whole bunch of red herrings, she discovers that the hotel’s owner’s sister was the psycho killer, and the hotel owner’s sister helpfully gives a big exposition-y speech to explain why she did what she did, and how. That’s The Sanatorium done and dusted, right? You’d think so, except the Epilogue is told from the perspective of someone else – who? no one knows! – who was actually stalking Elin all along. WTF?! Read my full review of The Sanatorium here.

Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck

Yep, Steinbeck really was the master of endings that will make you say WTF?! That’s why he’s on this list twice. Of Mice And Men should be a short, sweet novel about two men trying to make their way in the world, despite the odds being stacked against them. Instead, it’s a brutal interrogation of sacrifice, structural oppression, misfortune, and malady in under 30,000 words. Lennie – literally the only truly sympathetic character in the whole debacle, who lives with an intellectual disability – murders multiple animals, and a woman, all by accident. Then his bestie, George, shoots him in the back of the head while promising him that everything’s going to be okay. Like, seriously, Steinbeck needed therapy. Read my full review of Of Mice And Men here.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

I acknowledge that Gone Girl might be kind of an obvious choice for book endings that will make you say WTF?! Plus, if you’re reading it for the first time today, you probably won’t be quite as shocked by the Big Twist Reveal(s). But put it into context, folks: back when it was released, back in 2012, this shit knocked everyone for six. You spend the first half of the book all but convinced that Nick is the stereotypical lying scumbag husband who bumped off his wife when their marriage got rocky… only to be hit with a brick when it turns out his wife is a true savage psychopath. Then there’s the ending, where she has sneakily held onto his sperm and used it to impregnate herself so he can never dob her in for her crimes? I mean… whaaaaaaaaat the fuck? Read my full review of Gone Girl here.

One Day by David Nicholls

I can’t be the only one who picked up One Day thinking it was your standard rom-com with a fun hook (that the story is told through a series of vignettes, the same day in every year for two decades of their lives). I mean, surely they go through ups and downs and then overcome obstacles to end up together, right? Nope! Much like My Sister’s Keeper earlier, there’s a sudden and shock death that rips the heroine from the hero’s clutches. After all of that, the struggles and the close-but-no-cigars, after we got all emotionally invested, Nicholls ends with a sad bloke climbing a mountain and remembering the first time he kissed his now-dead true love goodbye. That’s basically a hate crime. WTF?!

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Well, maybe Alias Grace isn’t one of those book endings that will make you say WTF?! as much as it is one of those book endings that will make you say “where the heck did THAT come from?”. Atwood fictionalises the story of the real life and crimes of Grace Marks. She and another servant in the same household, James McDermott, were tried and convicted of the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper (slash secret lover) Nancy Montgomery. All of that it is for real, and while fascinating, fairly standard. Only, right towards the end, Atwood twists the story so that Grace Marks was the victim of some kind of possession? The evil spirit of a former friend took her over, and that’s how the murders happened. Um, wtf?! Then it’s back to reality (whoop!), Marks is pardoned, and she starts a new life in New York. Baffling! Read my full review of Alias Grace here.