Cat's Eye

karen

Rating: really liked it
i know for a fact that books were written and published after this one, but i can't for the life of me understand why.

come to my blog!

Lisa

Rating: really liked it
"This is the middle of my life, I think of it as a place, like the middle of a river, the middle of a bridge, halfway across, halfway over. I'm supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom. I'm supposed to be a person of substance."

The scary thing is that you stay a child inside that accumulation of life. You take your childhood with you when you enter the grown-up world, and as much as you try to pretend that you are free and light as a feather, you carry the heavy weight of having been a child wherever you go.

This is the story of a grown-up woman, an artist, who dares to go down memory lane and remember the abusive friendships, the feeling of dependence, of helplessness, of hatred and admiration merged into the odd feeling of wanting to belong even if belonging means being in acute pain. It tells the everyday tale of a sensitive child under the spell of a bully. It explores how selectively we can choose to forget in order to be able to live on, and how inconvenient it can be for us to suddenly remember what we chose not to know anymore:

"You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away."

I loved this novel to bits when I first read it, and it scared me out of my comfort zone. It was one of the most intensely revealing reflections on childhood and its impact on grown-up life I have ever encountered, simply because the story is so common, and so universal, and so typical. The idea of confronting a childhood bully with one's memories is terrifying, especially as one can never trust the mind to behave as a grown-up when confronted with deeply hidden childhood fears and wishes. A bullied child won't ever forget the feeling of powerlessness or the humiliation and the wish to change the pattern of perceived failure. But the bully will have her own reality, unconnected to the all-absorbing memories of the hurt child:

"She will have her own version. I am not the centre of her story, because she herself is that. But I could give her something you can never have, except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is part of herself I could give back to her."

My guess is that most bullies are too one-dimensional to accept a reflection of themselves that might not be favorable, and that it remains the role of the weaker and more sensitive (more intelligent!) human being to understand the mechanisms behind evil group behaviour: "Whoever cares the most will lose". But that is only part of the truth. Looking back with hindsight, a new pattern is formed, and the negative memories become fruitful for personal development.

They are the roots for a rich inner life, and the message I read between the lines in Cat's Eye is that your experience can't be changed or undone, but it can be turned into creative power, and it can feed your understanding of the world. It can help you keep your inner child active beyond childhood, and drive your ambition. You can sculpt a life out of the clay you are given, and turn it into your individual artwork. If you dare to look into the cat's eye of your memories, that is.

You carry your cat's eye marbles with you, shiny, cold, hard, difficult to trade and play with, but beautiful and magical at the same time, a visual and tactile proof of your existence:



Recommended to those who are brave enough to face the true life of children, often too hard to retrospectively bear for grown-ups.

Samadrita

Rating: really liked it
I look at the progression of 5-star ratings by friends - mostly women - and wonder if it is a womanly weakness to rate a book 5 stars which deconstructs the world from the female perspective? Is this visceral urge something to be ashamed of, something you must suppress to show due deference to 'standards' of literary appraisal?

But then why don't I feel conflicted enough while handing out my 5 stars to those modern masterpieces written mostly by dead, white men? All those narrative voices that busy themselves with the righteous task of pondering the depths of colonialism and oppression and class conflict and what other sociopolitical fuckups have you while simultaneously omitting out one half of the human race's points of view - books that throw in a woman character as the obligatory object of patronizing love or lust or as a lifeless plot device, turning her into a mere accessory meant to embellish the life of the male narrator whose word is the truth by default while the sanctity of all else is subject to skepticism.

The naked women are presented in the same manner as the plates of meat and dead lobsters, with the same attention to the play of candlelight on skin, the same lusciousness, the same sensuous and richly rendered detail, the same painterly delight in tactility. [] They appear served up.

Or is this a failing of civilization that a large majority of readers will simply glance at that blurb or the reviews which make it sound as if this were solely about the private world of girls, spot that glaring 'feminism' label and dismiss the possibility of reading this? One would think that even a literary treatment of the 'private world of girls' is a subject so outside the sphere of all humanly concern that it warrants the level of universal apathy it generates.

Women are hard to keep track of, most of them. They slip into other names, and sink without a trace.

This is not so much the story of an ageing female painter (Elaine Risley) - a relic of the pre-feminism mode of life - told in snatches, as much as it is an account of the relationships which molded and shaped her character and the enduring trauma of childhood bullying which manifested itself in nearly all her life choices, flawed as they were. Not so much a fictionalized outpouring of her discontent with her declining youth and whitening hair as much her rivetting blow-by-blow dissection of the world and the people around her through the years. And because I know Atwood stringently avoids any associations with the term 'feminist' or any group identity which seeks to shoehorn her writing into some exclusive compartment, I'll merely say it also includes some of the most cutting, precise and unbiased observations about every issue of major importance. Wars, terrorism, racism, religious bigotry, sexism, misogyny, art and art criticism, motherhood, the politics of relationships...you name it and Elaine has startling new wisdom to offer on that topic, however time-worn.

The world is being run by people my age, men my age, with falling-out hair and health worries, and it frightens me. When the leaders were older than me I could believe in their wisdom, I could believe they had transcended rage and malice and the need to be loved. Now I know better. I look at the faces in newspapers, in magazines, and wonder: what greeds, what furies-drive them on?

The complexity of relationships between women of nearly all ages is often a difficult thing to fully comprehend let alone commit to paper. Generally, we find it easier to communicate with men. While with other women you are forever grasping at straws, unable to determine which layer of superficiality you are dealing with and which of your layers of feigned cordiality or fabricated fellow feeling may win their favor. But Atwood, the mistress of the craft that she is, has brought the private, secretive world of female bondings alive and demolished one of the greatest pop culture stereotypes ever - that of the mean girl. So believe the reviewers who have confessed to having a Cordelia-like frenemy in their lives - someone who understood them better than a lot of people while simultaneously doling out emotional torment in devious ways. I'm no exception. Once you come across a Cordelia in your life - no matter how much you may have loathed her at times - it's hard to dull the edges of the memory of your involvement with her. She looms larger than life at the back of your mind and fades into the distance of years. Try as you might you cannot forget her. And neither could Elaine.

There is the same shame, the sick feeling in my body, the same knowledge of my own wrongness, awkwardness, weakness; the same wish to be loved; the same loneliness; the same fear. But these are not my own emotions any more. They are Cordelia's; as they always were.

Candi

Rating: really liked it
“I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”

I have no doubt that much of what happens to us in childhood is directly related to the adults we eventually become. Like the protagonist Elaine Risley, memories of my own childhood bubble to the surface more often than I’d like. I reflect on these and attempt to make sense of how both the good and the bad moments have shaped me. Cat’s Eye, my fourth by Margaret Atwood, is one of my favorite sorts of books – a coming of age novel and a brilliant character study. The fact that it takes place in Toronto – a beloved weekend destination – adds the dollop of whipped cream to the already scrumptious sundae.

“I am left to the girls, real girls at last, in the flesh. But I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.”

Elaine grew up with a brother and never attended school for any substantial length of time. Her father was an entomologist, and much of their education occurred during their travels while he conducted his field research. Her mother was not like other mothers, wearing slacks, taking dance lessons, and skating at the local rink. When they buy a house in Toronto, she will be truly thrown into the merciless world of girls for the very first time. I can attest to the fact that it can be a very vicious realm indeed. Fortunately, I was never much of a victim, having decided to avoid the clutches of those that could do the most harm. But I witnessed it, and I can vouch that the cruelty of girls to one another hasn’t changed much over the years. The main difference now is that they can more easily broadcast their malice through various forms of social media. It’s even easier to be a bully now than it was before. It takes less time and effort to click a button than to confront someone in person and wield your weapons.

In Elaine’s day, prior to all the technology we are now blessed or cursed with, it only took a small gang of girls to decide which one would be the target. How much easier it is to inflict harm when said target is one of your own, a friend even. A friend you can manipulate more easily, as you hold her in your thrall. Here, the ring leader is Cordelia, Elaine’s ‘best friend’. She is assisted by her accomplices, Grace and Carol.

“With enemies you can feel hatred, and anger. But Cordelia is my friend. She likes me, she wants to help me, they all do. They are my friends, my girlfriends, my best friends. I have never had any before and I’m terrified of losing them. I want to please. Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.”

The narrative is told by Elaine during her middle-aged years as she looks back to her childhood and young adulthood. She is now a successful painter and has returned to Toronto for a retrospective of her art work. The story alternates between these time periods and it does so very effectively. Many of her paintings reflect her early years. I always find the artist’s background and creative process to be rather intriguing, and very much appreciated the influence of Atwood’s personal knowledge here.

“I can no longer control these paintings, or tell them what to mean. Whatever energy they have came out of me. I’m what’s left over.”

When we really start to consider who we have become, are we satisfied or maybe even proud of ourselves? Ashamed or disappointed? Can we become someone we did not wish to be? What do you do with those early experiences – do we learn from them or do we take on some of those attributes in order to add a protective armor? Naturally, we won’t all be able to answer the question the same way, and likely we can’t truly answer it at all. Elaine wrestles with this as an adult, and more keenly so now that she has returned to the setting of these formative years. She hopes to run into Cordelia during her retrospective at the gallery. Would it be therapeutic to face your childhood demons, or is it best to let them go?

“I’m not afraid of seeing Cordelia. I’m afraid of being Cordelia. Because in some way we changed places, and I’ve forgotten when.”

This is an exceptional novel and one that I had a difficult time setting aside. The writing is razor-sharp. Based on what I’ve read so far, it seems Atwood doesn’t gravitate towards sentimentality. It works especially well here. There’s much more than what I’ve relayed in this review – you’ll find occasional dry humor, thoughts on marriage, feminism and aging, as well as a child’s exploration of religion. This one, along with Alias Grace, is definitely a clear favorite.

“There is never only one, of anyone.”

J.L. Sutton

Rating: really liked it
“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.”

<>

Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye is a novel about an artist, Elaine Risley, returning to Toronto for a retrospective of her work. Elaine's retrospective provides the impetus to revisit memories; she vividly recounts childhood traumas, marriage and motherhood. In so doing, we get a clearer picture of how all those incidents made her who she is in the present. Atwood's description of the tide going out is a beautiful description of this process, as well as what we're left with.

While the writing was fantastic--it is after all written by Margaret Atwood--it wasn't until a pivotal scene with Elaine's childhood bullies/friends about halfway through the book that I was really gripped by the unfolding memories. Elaine is super observant, but not always able to recognize meaning, but her tormentor, Cordelia, has been equally observant, zeroing in on Elaine's vulnerabilities. That is especially reflected in that pivotal scene at the bridge.

The relationship between the two girls changes after that incident, but Atwood stresses the continued connection of people, "What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.” By the time Elaine returns for her retrospective, she misses Cordelia in her life: This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.” I also liked how Atwood talked about finding memories: “You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”

This was a powerful character study. I was blown away from the bridge scene forward, but, and this could well be my own fault, it didn't fully engage me for a long time.

4.25 stars

“Potential has a shelf life.”

İntellecta

Rating: really liked it
"Katzenauge" is one of the many novels of the well-known Canadian author Margaret Atwood.
It is the story of two women and their friendship; a friendship that became hostility - a story about childhood, about growing up.

The style of writing is gripping, almost enthralling, so that the reader feels so close to reading so the impression arises that the narrative contains biographical features.

Michael

Rating: really liked it
One of Atwood's more famous works of fiction, Cat's Eye is at once a meditation on the sorrows and comforts accompanying age as well as a coming-of-age story about a tumultuous and abusive bond between two young girls. The novel juxtaposes past and present against each other, via twin narratives about the protagonist's childhood and adulthood. The latter plot follows artist Elaine Risley as she returns to bustling Toronto, the city of her desolate youth, for a retrospective of her work, while the former focuses on her toxic childhood friendship with her classmate Cordelia, which ends in trauma. In addition to portraying relationships between young girls with great nuance, the novel subtly captures how the lingering memory of early adversity informs the experience of everyday life during adulthood.

Cecily

Rating: really liked it
What it's about

"We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something."

The power of abusive friendships and relationships is the theme of this book, though not all the relationships are tainted, so it's not depressing and at times it's quite amusing (e.g. discerning the mysteries of puberty).

There is also a fair bit about art and artists, with a dash of early feminism.

Plot structure

Elaine is an artist in her late fifties/early sixties revisiting Toronto for the opening of a retrospective of her work. This brings back vivid memories of her childhood, teens and twenties. The sections set in the past are told chronologically, and interspersed by the contemporary story of a few days in Toronto. Gradually all the threads tie up, particularly near the end when contrasting a curator’s descriptions of Elaine’s works with her own explanations, many of which arise from incidents described earlier in the book. However, “I can no longer control these paintings, or tell them what to mean. Whatever energy they have came out of me. I’m what’s left over.”

Her early years were peripatetic but not unhappy: the family travel with her entomologist father. When she is seven, he takes a university post and they settle in the Toronto suburbs, but her family is rather eccentric, and she doesn't quite fit in, exacerbated by her being a tomboy and the fact she’s never really had the opportunity to make friends before, so doesn’t know the unspoken rules.

Perhaps inevitably, Elaine becomes the victim of bullying, and the first overt instance is very cruel, although it involves no physical pain or nasty words. There is nothing to tell. “I have no black eyes, no bloody noses to report: C does nothing physical.”

The pull of bullies

I’ve never really been bullied, but the thoughts and self-analysis sound plausible.

Like so many victims, Elaine feels drawn to the bully: she “is my friend. She likes me. She wants to help me, they all do. They are my friends… I have never had any before and I’m terrified of losing them. I want to please. Hatred would have been easier… I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.” She reasons, “I will have to do better. But better at what?... I think they [bully’s older sisters] would be my allies if only they knew. Knew what? Even to myself I am mute.” She even gives things to her tormentors because “in the moment just before giving, I am loved” even though she has no doubt about the love of her own family.

Coping strategies

Elaine develops various coping strategies. She self-harms in a minor way (“the pain gave me something definite to think about”), adopts a talisman (the eponymous cat’s eye marble and the luck of a royal visit to the city) and in some ways, victimhood builds strength and also empathy. “I can sniff out hidden misery in others now.” She also escapes through art, especially of foreign places and discovers that “Fainting is like stepping sideways, out of your own body, out of your own time or into another time. When you wake up it’s later. Time has gone on without you.”

The most important question is only occasionally made explicit: how should parents handle things? When Elaine’s mother realises something of what’s going on, she tells her daughter to toughen up, in part because she doesn’t know what else to suggest. The church-going mother of the main bully has a far more alarming attitude, based on the fact that Elaine is a heathen.

Eventually Elaine finds the inner strength to walk away, “I can hear the hatred but also the need. They need me for this and I no longer need them.” Nevertheless, although they sometimes go for years without contact, the connection continues, though balance of their relationship alters at different times.

Adult consequences

I don’t know if all victims have the potential to become bullies, but Elaine occasionally has flashes of it in adulthood, “It disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.” She is always more relaxed around boys (she has an older brother), “boys are my secret allies”. Conversely, “I enjoy pestering the girls in this minor, trivial way: it shows I am not like them” and in a bar with boys from the university art class, “I expect nothing from them. In truth I expect a lot. I expect to be accepted.”

As an adult, Elaine is moderately happy and successful, yet her past taints all her relationships to some extent. She also fears passing on her anxieties to her own daughters, “I felt I had to protect them from certain things about myself… But they didn’t seem to need that protection.” As a teenager, she didn’t want to know too much family history, even about apparently trivial things, “All this is known, but unimaginable. I also wish I did not know it. I want my father to be just my father, the way he has always been, not a separate person with an earlier, mythological life of his own. Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.”


Lines I liked

* ”Clothes lines are strung with… a display of soiled intimacy, which they [mothers] have washed and rinsed, plunging their hands into the grey curdled water."

* About knowing about her brother’s secret girlfriend, “Knowing this secret… makes me feel important in a way. But it’s a negative importance. I can know because I don’t count.”

* “What they call a shopping complex, as if shopping were a psychic disease.”

* In a department store, “the air is saturated with the stink of perfumes at war”.

* “All fathers except mine are invisible in day time; day time is ruled by mothers. But fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home the fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to them than meets the eye.”

* On the difference between faith and knowledge: Elaine thought she had a vision, but next morning was less certain, “I’m not sure now, that it really was the Virgin Mary. I believe it but I no longer know it.”

* “Art is what you can get away with said somebody or other, which makes it sound like shop-lifting… A hijacking of the visual.”

* “My name has solidified around me, with time. I think of it as tough but pliable now, like a well-worn glove.”

* “Somehow the war never ended after all, it just broke up into pieces and got scattered, it gets in everywhere, you can’t shut it out.”

* On giving money to a beggar, “It’s obscene to have such power; also to feel so powerless.”

* “Craziness was considered funny, like all other things that were in reality frightening and profoundly shameful.”

* An antique shop has “one-time throwouts, recycled as money”.

* The angry sex of a disintegrating relationship: “We make love, if that is any longer the term for it. It’s not shaped like love, not coloured like it, but harsh, war-coloured, metallic. Things are being proved. Or repudiated.”

See also

A comment on my review of Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal (HERE), highlighting "toxic female friendship" made me realise the connection between the two books.

BlackOxford

Rating: really liked it
Pity-wanting Pain

Reading Cat's Eye is like watching a film, only with smells, and taste, and touch in addition to cinematic sight and sound. Its heroine, Elaine, has all these 'outward wits' which Atwood captures magnificently. But, although Elaine is an artist, she has almost nothing of the 'inward wits' of communal sense, imagination, fantasy, estimation or memory.

The story is three dimensional: the North/South dimension of her life with her parents who migrate every year from Toronto to the Laurentians on biological field trips; the East/West dimension of her independent life which stretches from Toronto to Vancouver; and the temporal dimension of her own maturation.

Periodically the three dimensions collapse into moments of insight and clarity that progress from childhood with age: boys are noisy and messy but essentially uncomplicated; girls are generally hateful even, especially, when they are friends; young men are superficial and boring; older men are duplicitous and domineering; motherhood is a schlep; marriage is a continuous losing battle; feminist sisterhood isn't to be trusted; art is largely pretense and scam and dates rather quickly.

Elaine's life is a tale of haplessness, of lurching from one emotional trauma to the next. There are no plans, no goals, no passions. She falls into art as she falls into bed with unsuitable men. The step by step development of her life is told is Proustian detail but without the introspective analysis. Every action is compulsive with no apparent rationale.

She knows this and learns from her traumatic experiences, but only those lessons that are relevant to the past, not to new situations. Every insight is obsolete as soon as she arrives at it. Her past persists in her feelings and her art, both inadequate for the world she inhabits now. She realizes that her life is a ruin, with no obvious cause for its ruination.

So Elaine lives in pain. "Pain is important but only certain kinds of it: the pain of women but not the pain of men. Telling about pain is called sharing." Among her feminist friends at least. She prefers men, even her ex-husband, to this therapeutic band. "There's not much time left, for us to become what we intended," she says, as if she actually had an intention. Perhaps this is the source of her pain. "Potential," she says, "has a shelf life." But Atwood isn't saying what the source of her apathetic trajectory might be. She let's the reader make her own diagnosis.

Julie Ehlers

Rating: really liked it
When I finished Cat's Eye the other night I had goosebumps and they didn't go away immediately. I paced around my living room for a while, rubbing my arms. I didn't quite know what I was feeling and I still don't. I don't think I've ever read such a deep dive into a character before, where we get to see how a character's childhood and upbringing affects the trajectory of her entire life. In some ways this book is about how women relate to themselves and one another in a sexist society, but it also pretends it's not about that; Elaine, the main character, has some blind spots that make her all the more interesting to consider. I thought the writing was phenomenal, poetic wtithout being fussy, with so many layers, and yet even on the surface it was a fantastic, entertaining story.

As I've mentioned on Goodreads a few times, I first read this back when I was 18 or 19, and that fact makes me laugh now. I was in no way sophisticated enough to appreciate what a towering work this is. All this time I thought this was one of Margaret Atwood's lesser novels! But that's changed. Move over, Robber Bride and Oryx and Crake. Cat's Eye is my new favorite.

Emily Coffee and Commentary

Rating: really liked it
An electric reflection on cruelty, self expression, and toxic relationships. Beguiling and disturbing, in artistic and real life struggles, we see the lasting effects of trauma and confusion that toxic relationships leave on us. So often, our lives go forward, but our personalities, perceptions, memories, and our ability to form new connections are profoundly altered by the people of our past. We spend so much effort on our image through the eyes of others that we forget to look truly and deeply at ourselves, to sever our self perception from the self esteem damaged by others. Darkly humorous and relatable, with all the sharpness and style of an artist.

James

Rating: really liked it
As a relative latecomer to the works of Margaret Atwood (this was my fourth book in) – she continues to impress and engage immensely.

‘Cat’s Eye’ has, like ‘The Blind Assassin’ (which it predates by around a decade) memory and memories as its central narrative device. Both novels have a central protagonist nearer to the end of their days than to the start – looking back and confronting the memories from various periods in their earlier lives. Ostensibly, that is as far as any similarity goes – beyond that the books bear’s very little resemblance in either nature or narrative to each other.

The very first page, indeed the opening paragraph, sets the scene, the tone and the theme – this is a novel all about time, it’s all about dimension and circularity. This first page is so particularly well written, so compelling (even by Atwood’s high standards) it defiantly draws the reader in, reels them in like an unsuspecting, helpless yet consenting catch, submissive on the end of Atwood’s line.

Thereon in we learn more about the childhood, formative years and life of our main protagonist – Elaine Risley latterly an artist, seemingly addressing her life through her work, making preparations for a retrospective of her paintings, whilst at the same time remembering and revisiting her past.

The subsequent parts of the book concerning Risley's childhood are particularly strong, indeed outstanding – these form the heart and the most powerful part of the novel. Whilst this is clearly familiar territory for many writers, what Atwood gives us here is not the usual tired, clichéd, staid, mildly diverting but rose-tinted and empty nostalgia – as you would expect from some, Atwood gives us far more than that. Yes this is by definition of course a form of nostalgia (of the best kind) it has to be and it does provide us with some of the funniest work by Atwood that I have read thus far, nevertheless and nostalgia nothwithstanding…underlying all this there is always a brooding presence, a sense of foreboding, a feeling of impending doom. There’s an expectation of a fall, of a downward trajectory…always just on the horizon, always around the next corner, always just behind that door… It has been noted by others in the past that ‘Cat’s Eye’ is a ‘Lord of the Flies’ for girls….

For this novel is ultimately all about the scars, the fears, the hurts and the pains of childhood – that in many cases stay with us throughout our lives; indeed in some cases define the rest of our lives.
This is the world of the playground bully, playground rules, unwritten codes of conduct and a childhood world where making one wrong social move can have dire and unspeakable consequences. This is so very well written and portrayed by Atwood – conveying a deeply disturbing picture of the world of growing up, trying to fit in – in a world of covert bullying, perfidious and all pervading.

It could be argued that this element to the novel presents what is essentially a Freudian world view and analysis – all about the traumas, the mental scars of childhood remaining with us, affecting and determining our lives, defining our futures. ‘Tell me about your childhood’… as it were. But I think what Atwood provides is something more sophisticated and complex than that, more profound and less simplistic. There is much here about the compulsion to recognise, to acknowledge and to confront the demons of our childhood. It does feel very much throughout this novel that there is the need for this confrontation, for resolution and for closure – as to whether Atwood gives us this…I will leave you to decide…

Perhaps, as in life (or at least some lives) the parts of this novel concerning childhood do seem to determine and define the remainder of the novel. Whilst the passages concerning teenage years and adulthood in ‘Cat’s Eye’ are on the whole extremely well-written and engaging, as you’d expect from Atwood – for the most part they don’t have the same emotional impact and power as those concerning childhood.

It should be noted that there are apparently some elements contained herein from, or influenced by Atwood’s early life, however she has repeatedly stressed that the plot is an entirely fictitious one. This is not even close to being semi-autobiographical.

This is a novel about the circularity of life and of time – this much is clear from the opening page. It is about the ending(s) and the beginning(s) – the beginning(s) and the ending(s) – the child within us is always there, the past is always ever-present, always with us.

“Time is not a line but a dimension…nothing goes away…”

Whilst possibly not quite in the same league as ‘The Blind Assassin’ or indeed ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ – this is undoubtedly a very fine book, Atwood writes so very well and with such skill; ‘Cat’s Eye’ is clearly another important part of the hugely impressive Margaret Atwood literary canon and is not to be missed.

Beverly

Rating: really liked it
Her greatest story, about childhood bullying amid seemingly innocent play and the dire consequences, also has wonderful things to say about siblings, a brother and a sister's relationship, and marriage.

Anne (On semi-hiatus)

Rating: really liked it
“Time is not a line but a dimension..You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.''


Margaret Atwood's novel Cat’s Eye dazzled me. It is brilliant and beautifully written. It takes on the topic of friendships of girls between the ages of 8-12 and how those years can affect their emotional development into adulthood. Atwood has an uncanny knowledge of these girls and their struggles which is rendered in psychologically penetrating detail. Atwood uses bullying to show a nasty part of life for some of these young girls, how critical "fitting in" is for them and the lengths they will go to feel liked by their peers.

On a personal note I have to say that I was not bullied in school. Several of my friends have shared with me their experiences of being bullied. Thank you. Though I wasn't bullied at school I was bullied at home by a family member so I am very much acquainted with bullying. I can vouch for Atwood's thesis that we are our memories.

Elaine Risley, our narrator, is a Canadian painter who, at age 50, has returned to her childhood city of Toronto for a retrospective of her work. The dull, provincial city of her youth has changed greatly since she left. It is now ''New York without the garbage and muggings.” But in the week she is there her interest in the city's new galleries, restaurants and shops and in the retrospective itself, is minimal. Her focus, and the novel's, is all on the past, on those images and memories that surface unexpectedly, of many people, but mostly of Cordelia, her childhood friend and tormentor.

With the beginning of each section of this story we are with Elaine in the present. Something in the present triggers a memory and the story travels seamlessly to the past, picking up where the story left off. Most of the novel takes place in the past. Both time frames are written in the first person so we get to know Elaine in the present tense, in both the present and the past, lending great immediacy to the story and most importantly, reflecting that emotions and memories remain in the present. I was with Elaine every step of the way and I felt what she felt: pride, unworthiness, sadness, joy, love, pain, worry, happiness, terror, etc..

One of the first scenes in the novel is of Elaine visitng the site where her exhibit will take place. Elaine notices that someone has drawn a mustache on Elaine's picture outside the gallery which is holding a retrospective of her art. I love her reaction to this which is so apt:

"Suddenly I feel wonder. I have achieved finally a face that a mustache can be drawn on, a face that attracts mustaches, a public face, a face worth defacing. This is an accomplishment. I have made something of myself.... after all.”

Elaine's first eight years are spent on the road with her family, as her father, an entomologist, tracks infestations across northern Canada. For Elaine and her brother it is an enchanted existence, ''irregular, and slightly festive,'' a life of motels and tents, but it little prepares her for the life that is to follow when her parents move to Toronto, to a new and only partially completed tract house in a growing suburb. There, amid the tightly prescribed rituals, Elaine quickly learns that there are .''things my parents have been keeping from me, things I need to know'': a whole vocabulary of household words, ''chintz,'' ''coat tree,'' … and the need for braids, dressing gowns and purses, the whole, complicated world of girls. At one point Elaine thinks she has finally figured out one of the secrets to fitting in:

"Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there's a whole world of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be part of without making any effort at all. I don't have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, or aim as well..… I don't have to think about whether I do these things well, as well as a boy. All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut frying pans out of the Eaton's Catalogue with embroidery scissors, and say I've done it badly.”

Elaine learns that it is shameful to want to be successful, to admit that you made an effort at something or to be proud of your ability. Instead, ."yours is so much better than mine,".. or ."I'm so bad at this,”.. are the correct things to say. The aim of these remarks is to receive a compliment and to be flattered by your friends. But they are also about forcing conformity and mediocrity. It is better to deliberately do something badly than to admit that you want to or can do something well.


At the center of Elaine’s new world is Cordelia. Cordelia lives in one of the larger houses, a house with… a powder room, napkin rings, egg cups. Her mother paints and has a cleaning woman. Elaine lives in an unfinished house with very little furniture (at first) and no frills. Certainly not a cleaning woman because Elaine’s mother likes to clean, to do all the work herself. Fashion is not on Elaine’s mother’s mind, while it is very important to. Cordelia and all the people in the neighborhood.

Cordelia sees the difference in Elaine and is scornful and manipulative. Elaine adores her and Cordelia finds in Elaine a target for her “improvements.” In the campaign of terror that follows, Cordelia and her two friends surround Elaine throughout her day, pointing out her failings, her weaknesses, mocking the way she walks, the way she eats, the way she laughs. They ostracize her and torment her with her own image:

“Cordelia brings a mirror to school … She takes it out of her pocket and holds the mirror up in front of me and says ‘Look at yourself! Just look!’ Her voice is disgusted.”

Though this cruelty feels very specific to Elaine, there’s also something universal about it. The adult Elaine remembering this bullying realizes that women are always judged and “there is no end to imperfection”..

Faced with this reign of terror Elaine submits and feels that she needs to learn from Cordelia in order to be liked by her and the other girls.

’'I am not normal, I am not like other girls. Cordelia tells me so, but she will help me. . . . It will take hard work and a long time….She is my friend. She likes me. She wants to help me, they all do. They are my friends… I have never had any before and I’m terrified of losing them. I want to please. Hatred would have been easier… I would have known what to do.”

This bullying goes on for a long time until a major event changes Elaine’s outlook as well as her relationship to Cordelia.

It is very fitting that Elaine becomes an artist and paints the faces of women. For one thing, she grew up with parents and a brother who made things with their hands instead of buying them when possible. More importantly, her art is her outlet for all the trauma and mixed feelings from her childhood and a way to try to come to terms with those feelings. Her paintings mostly showcase the different forms and faces of women. At her retrospective we notice that Elaine is comfortable with men but a bit wary of women. The reader understands exactly why.

.Cat's Eye is a stunning novel with a lot to say, more than I could write about in this review for fear of spoilers (and because this review is long enough). Through Elaine's raw, heartwarming and heart-wrenching story we witness Atwood's idea that "your memories are you.... They never go away" and all that that means for Elaine and possibly for the reader. This novel inevitably leads the reader to think about his/her own memories and how they exist in you in the present and how they may have impacted your life.

.Cat's Eye is one of the best books I've read this year and is an all-time favorite. Completely immersed in Elaine's world and mind while reading this book I got to know Elaine so well that she feels like a real person about whom I care deeply.

The memory of this book lives in me.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone left on this planet who has not read it yet.

Glenn Sumi

Rating: really liked it
The annual Santa Claus Parade trotted and pranced through downtown Toronto a couple of Sundays ago, and while it was going on I thought of Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.

Although I read the book – considered a highlight of Atwood’s middle period – more than two months ago, the image of protagonist Elaine and her frenemies watching the parade from her entomologist-father’s office at the University of Toronto stuck with me. While passing the big boulevard of University Avenue, I even looked up at a couple of windows in dull, brick buildings (I’m sure the original has been torn down, replaced by something more modern), imagining the girls on one of the upper floors caustically commenting on the tacky floats.

Images like that pervade this nostalgia-tinged book about Elaine Risley, a painter in mid-career, who visits the city where she grew up while a retrospective of hers is going up in a chic Queen Street West gallery.

Cat’s Eye is a novel full of ghosts, especially that of Elaine’s childhood nemesis, Cordelia, who taunts her, torments her and in one particularly disturbing scene leaves her to die one winter night in one of Toronto’s ravines. Spoiler alert: Elaine survives, and the way she’s rescued is suffused with a mystical element that later works its way into her art.

Elaine is now based in Vancouver, but as she walks past landmarks she keeps thinking she sees Cordelia. She’s also haunted by her brilliant physicist brother, and the intense games she and he were forced to play to be accepted socially once they moved from rural Ontario, where their father studied bugs, to the city.

This is one of Atwood’s most personal books. Her father was indeed an entomologist, and she and her family did live for many years in the woods, isolated from the social rules and hierarchies of city life. It's filled with lots of sensual details – sights, sounds, tastes – that evoke childhood, youth and young adulthood.

The book also provides a clear-eyed look at the complex relationships among women – friends? rivals? competitors? – especially in the decades before the feminist movement.

And for anyone familiar with Toronto, Atwood provides a very amusing look at how the city has changed: not just geographically but culturally, with every hip pretension and snobby boutique savagely skewered. The details about Elaine’s early works – and the media reaction to a feminist group show – are also fascinating. And the way women are treated in the art world – first at school and then professionally – have a documentary-like realism to them. Atwood knows this scene.

I wanted a bit more about Elaine’s current relationships. And there’s a schematic quality to the book’s time scheme that Atwood has used in other books, like The Blind Assassin.

But this is a powerful, essential novel in Atwood’s oeuvre, and one of the best novels about this city ever written.