Product Description

Elaine Risley, a painter, returns to Toronto to find herself overwhelmed by her past. Memories of childhood - unbearable betrayals and cruelties - surface relentlessly, forcing her to confront the spectre of Cordelia, once her best friend and tormentor, who has haunted her for forty years. 'Not since Graham Greene has a novelist captured so forcefully the relationship between school bully and victim...Atwood's games are played, exquisitely, by little girls' LISTENER An exceptional novel from the winner of the 2000 Booker Prize

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8112 in Books
• Published on: 1994-04-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Margaret Atwood charts the psychological process of memory as compulsion and memory as a healing act through the character of Elaine Risley, an artist who returns to her home town of Toronto for a retrospective of her work. Elaine's visit triggers thoughts of her childhood with all the urgency of a bad rash. Dominating her reflections are her childhood "friends", three girls who wreak havoc on Elaine's self-esteem. Having spent her early childhood on the road with an entomologist father, a less than traditional mother and a brother more concerned with snot and snakes than the intricate behaviour codes of girls, the young Elaine is vulnerable to the indirect aggression of Cordelia, the ringleader of the group who seeks to improve her. Through Elaine's experiences, Margaret Atwood turns a keen and ironic eye on the training of females in North American culture: "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." The self-effacement of these girl-children barely masks a need for power that erupts all too often in cruel forms of play. This is a story in which the lines between victims and oppressors blur, in which forgiveness becomes an act of gaining power. Through humour, pain and insight, she makes us see, with surprise and recognition, details from childhood we may well have forgotten. --Chris Kellett, From 500 Great Books by Women

Review
'Not since Graham Greene or William Golding has a novelist captured so forcefully the relationship between school bully and victim...Atwood's power games are played, exquisitely, by little girls' LISTENER 'Irrestistible...This book is about life for all of us. She is one of our finest novelists. Read it' THE TIMES 'Atwood's taut and exquisite use of language makes all her books irresistable...' THE WEEK 'Margaret Atwood charts the psychological process of memory as compulsion and memory as a healing act through the character of Elaine Risley, an artist who returns to her home town of Toronto for a retrospective of her work. Elaine's visit triggers thoughts of her childhood with all the urgency of a bad rash. Dominating her reflections are her childhood "friends", three girls who wreak havoc on Elaine's self-esteem. Having spent her early childhood on the road with an entomologist father, a less than traditional mother and a brother more concerned with snot and snakes than the intricate behaviour codes of girls, the young Elaine is vulnerable to the indirect aggression of Cordelia, the ringleader of the group who seeks to improve her. Through Elaine's experiences, Margaret Atwood turns a keen and ironic eye on the training of females in North American culture: "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." The self-effacement of these girl-children barely masks a need for power that erupts all too often in cruel forms of play. This is a story in which the lines between victims and oppressors blur, in which forgiveness becomes an act of gaining power. Through humour, pain and insight, she makes us see, with surprise and recognition, details from childhood we may well have forgotten.' - Chris Kellett, From 500 Great Books by Women, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

SUNDAY TIMES
'Triumphantly wide ranging...by turns bleak, funny, sensously evocative and acutely penetrating.'

Customer Reviews

Attwood's most poigniant and compelling novel to date.
If you only read one Margaret Attwood book this should be it. This was the first of her novels that I read and I have been gripped by her work ever since. Cat's Eye is, on the surface, a first person documentary of a young girl's progression from childhood to her life as a moderately successful artist of a certain age.

Attwood's use of stream of consciousness may confuse an unwary reader. However don't be put off. Attwood reminds us from the outset that time is not a line but more like a pool of water into which our memory dips a hand from time to time. In fact this method of writing is aptly suited to Elaine's journey through the infulences and relationships which explain the woman she has become.

It would be impossible for anyone to read this book as a story. It is a series of memories. The backdrop to our journey is set in the present where Elaine, our navigator, is being 'honoured' with a retrospective of her artwork in a small gallery Toronto, the city of her upbringing. By way of a parallel to this Attwood gives us glimpses of Elaine's life in retrospective showing how each of the pivitol moments in her life have shaped her ability to interact with her environment and with those around herm, both men and women. To emphasise this point Attwood has dispensed with the uniform chapter titles and numbers. Instead there are numerous sporadic switches between the past and present, each of which is segmented under what could be the titles of paintings/artwork, the pictures of which we are encouraged to form in our own minds as we experience the world through Elaine's senses.

In particular Elaine centres on the influence of Cordelia her childhood 'friend' around whom her early attempts at stability were centred. Before coming to Toronto, the world Elaine knew was that of a wanderer, travelling from place to place with her Professor father, a scientist. The permanent life in Toronto introduces her to the lives and relationships of other girls her age and so she cements herself, nervously at first, into a group of girls. Then she is changed forever by the arrival of another girl, Cordelia who haunts her throughout the book. Although by defenition, Cordelia is not a physical bully, she exerts an influence on Elaine which will hold her forever. It is this relationship with Cordelia which has left her emotionally stunted until now as she grapples to lay her emotional ghosts to rest.

The subtlety of Attwood's expression is evident from the beginning. In particular the representation of Elaine as an artist and Attwood's manipulation of Elaine's view of the world are manifest in the quality description of Elaine's world. We are smothered by the colours, textures and feelings which surround Elaine, both in the physical world and in her own mind. But Attwood manages never to overstress the technique. Above all this book is about subtlety, what goes on behind the physical in Elaine's one true and constant world, her own mind.

This book is not exciting, never a whirlwind of action. But it is an enthrawling journey on which the reader is compelled to follow. It will bring back memories you never thought you had and remind you that it does not matter how we may change in our adult lives, it is our past which pursues us and which we ultimately must learn to control else it will ultimately consume us.

A thoroughly enjoyable work.

Spot on
`Cat's Eye' is the story of Elaine Risley, a painter who returns to Toronto for a retrospect of her work and finds herself flooded by memories of her past. Probably the first half of the novel focuses on Elaine's childhood, especially the complex relationship with her `friend' Cordelia, while roughly the second half shows her growing up and coping with the difficulties of more adult relationships.

`Cat's Eye' captures the pieces of childhood, and especially the complicated power games that girls play with each other, absolutely perfectly. While reading moments of my own past came back to be, rather like the older Elaine holding her marble and suddenly remembering a past she'd forgotten (if not put behind her) such a long time ago. Never before have I read a book that truly illustrates how subtle and nasty little girls really can be while in a believable and realistic context.

If I have a criticism it's that I enjoyed the early parts of the novel far more than the later when Elaine was older, however, being eighteen, it may only be that I was able to identify with the earlier incidents far more than troubled marriages and in twenty years I may feel differently.

Overall a hugely enjoyable book that really seems to chart how women act towards one another. Perhaps it wouldn't mean quite so much to men but I think many women would recognise moments and behaviour in this interesting and absorbing novel.

I've read a number of Margaret Atwood novels and short stories and while the writing possibly isn't as well done as `The Handmaid's Tale' it's still up there with the best. A must if you're a fan, probably a good place to start if it's your first.

Intense, profound and moving
I had to read this novel for my A-levels at school, but since we had already done 'The Handmaids Tale' (another winner), I wasn't apprehensive in the slightest.
The emotions it stirs up in you are amazing, and if you study the language and way it's written, as I had to, then you begin to see it's different levels.
This is the story of Elaine, the girl who is bullied by her 'friend' Cordelia. I found myself getting totally immersed in this story and making myself read faster just so I could find out how Elaine prevails. She's a strong little character, but with flaws that allow the bullying to continue. Once she has ridden herself of it, we begin to see how it effects her life and how she deals with it years after it has ended.
I think I had a week to read this book, and it only took me 2 days. Every spare second was taken up with it.
I admire Margaret Atwood's writing a great deal - there's an honesty and a sense of poetry in the tales she tells, and she has a gift of sweeping you up in them. This novel is definately one of her best, and worth keeping on the bookshelf to read over and over.