It seems that books by Margaret Atwood, a best-seller Canadian author, regularly considered for the Nobel Prize of literature, inspire the successful series of the moment ! After the huge buzz around The Handmaid's Tale in the United States, Netflix is using her novel Captive, published in 1998, to produce another winner with a new series that has everything to become a blockbuster.
The pitch has all the ingredients to please. Inspired by a real story, the author plunges you behind the bars of a Canadian penitentiary. But nothing to do with Orange is the new black : we are in 1859, and the conditions of women prisoners are deplorable. Grace Marks, a young servant sentenced to life for the double murder of her masters, undergoes the barbaric experimentations of cruel doctors.
But is Grace really guilty? Young psychiatrist Simon Jordan, who comes to examine her, must establish a report to prove her innocence. While listening to her story, Jordan feels that this young with a dark past ne does not seem that demented, even less criminal ; and yet, what are the strange dreams she is hiding from him ? Schizophrenia or double game
Why you will adore the book
Because Margaret Atwood is also an incredible author. When a series propels one the leading novelists of her generation, more than 20 years after the publication of her books, we clap loudly! Margaret Atwood, the Françoise Sagan or Canada is about to become the new feminist figure of literature, at almost 90 years old! With a style showcasing implacable lucidity, fine details, she misleads the reader in a labyrinth of false trails in order to pinpoint the violence of women’s conditions, a recurrent theme of her work. In Captive, the universe of Grace Marks has everything to make you fearful: illegal abortions, mutilated women, torture to treat mental troubles …
Why the series is going to keep you glued to your set?
Because Netflix has launched the new Emilia Clarke. It’s the revelation of this top notch casting … Who is hiding behind the angelic face of Sarah Gadon, the bluffing actress who encompasses a spine chilling thriller almost by herself? In Captive, she incarnates a persona with an ultra subtle ambiguity that is unveiled through multiple facets: a timid virgin, a manipulative seducer, relentless mythomaniac … 6 amazing episodes right up to the final shocking revelation!
Captive, season 1 available on Netflix.
Captive, by Margaret Atwood, Editions 10-18, 8.80.
