You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt. Today my guest is Margaret Atwood.

Her new book is Alias Grace, a marvelous novel based upon an actual case in Canada in what year is it?

1837.

1843.

Mm-hmm.

A woman had been condemned as a murderous and an accessory to murder at the age of 16.

And this book brings into it all of the information we need about the

dailiness of the life of a servant,

life in a jail in the 19th century.

I wanted to begin by asking perhaps a roundabout question.

I was fascinated.

At one point, Grace, the heroine, puts aside her churning,

saying that butter will not come if there's thunder. At another point, the rumor that casting

her mother to her burial at sea with her hair uncombed is a bad thing to do.

And I wondered, first of all, about where the superstitions in this book come from.

Actually, the hair ought to be loose rather than knotted

well they just came from

...