We're living in an awesome time where both Margaret Atwood and Stephen King--two of my favorite writers--are getting tons of love.
I completely forgot that Netflix was turning Alias Grace into a series until it popped up on my TV. I originally read the book in 2002 and apparently I devoured it so quickly that I forgot the ending. One thing I love about Margaret Atwood is how lovely her prose is--she can take even outlandish premises and deliver them seriously. But the thing I love more is that she is the antithesis of what I'm currently disliking in literary fiction: a hyper focus on delivering a true representation of "realistic" life. (If I have to read another book about an upper middle class marriage falling apart with no larger commentary about the world, I may die on the spot). Writers like Atwood and King seem to have no bounds to what their imagination can dredge up.
The series is incredibly well-filmed and acted. Grace is rendered with enough depth that she keeps you wondering. Like the Handmaid's Tale, you can't walk away from this series without thinking about all the constraints women are forced to live under. Creepy bosses, creepy neighbor boys, the complicit woman who sabotages you because the creepy boss you're not even interested in wants you. The bed as a place of violence. The ending of this killed me. I mean, of course it wasn't going to have a happy ending--I should have known better. (I went to go see Thor: Ragnarok after, mainly because I heard it was funny.)
Also, slight aside: books often translate better to series than they do to movies. They have more room to stretch out and give people some backstory.