"Flat as a pancake," and "overlong and badly written." When the New York Times critic tore into The Blind Assassin a couple of weeks back, it wasfront page news -- well, at least, on the front of the entertainment sections. This was big news, that someone would dare to say things like: "Here the novel most strongly exhibits its peculiar blend of the low and high, like a Nancy Drew story written by one of the Brontës."

The Canadian critics had been generally favourable to glowing in their praise of Margaret Atwood's 10th novel. The fact that a prominent American had dared to take our Peg down a peg was so shocking, so un-Canadian.

But the Canadian critics had perhaps been kind to the icon Atwood and The Blind Assassin, as a smart defensive strategy. She has this habit, you see, of taking revenge on her Canadian media critics in subsequent, thinly-veiled fiction. Staying cool at the time and serving up a cold dish of revenge at a later date. Such notables as Barbara Frum, Robert Fulford and June Callwood have been the victims of the devastating portraits.

So, perhaps, putting the New York Times attack on the front pages was a form of sly criticism on the part of the Canadians. Now comes a far more clever, far more devastating attack. No less a literary figure than John Updike took on The Blind Assassin assignment for last week's edition of The New Yorker.

Laced within some praise and admiration for the novel are phrases, here and there, that let us know what he's really thinking. Mallon took a hammer to the book, Updike uses the thin blade of a scythe. "A nagging sense of gimmickry, amid all these spinning wheel of the plot." "Atwood is a poet - thirteen collections' worth - as well as a contriver of fiction." "The reader cannot get through the glass wall."

To be fair, all such turns of phrase are qualified by further praise for Atwood's undeniable skill as a novelist, but the 2,000-word essay has the cumulative effect of damning with feint praise.

And what do I think? The Blind Assassin (McClelland and Stewart, $37.99), is indeed a brilliantly crafted, historically fascinating story. But having read most of Atwood's other novels, I had a pretty good idea of what was in her bag of tricks. Like many readers, I'd figured out the big "mystery" in the story pretty early on, and flipped through the next 400 pages or so waiting for the unreliable narrator, Iris Griffen, to come to the same conclusion.

Iris purports to tell the story of her life, from a grumpy old age in the present day. Iris and her late sister Laura grew up in a 20th century dysfunctional family, starting out in the industrious town of Port Ticonderoga and moving to high society Toronto mid-way through. The plot twists and turns through the World Wars, and zig-zags through Atwood's various literary devices.

First, we have the main narration, from the point of view of a discontented Iris. Interspersed throughout are purported newspaper clippings from the times, which provide clues to Iris's unreliability. Then there is a cheesy story, hardly worthy of a Harlequin romance, about two lovers torn apart by circumstances of class, but drawn together by impossible desire. Then we're a dished out a novel within a novel, a clumsy sci-fi story authored by Laura Chase and published posthumously. Whatever on earth made Margaret Atwood think she could pull off a story set on the plant Zycron?

All that really works in this odd, multi-media mix is the meticulously researched main narrative by Iris. She's a cranky old gal (much like the author) but a keen observer of our world and the other characters in it.