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    Cat's Eye: A Novel
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    Cat's Eye: A Novel
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    Cat's Eye: A Novel
    Audiobook16 hours

    Cat's Eye: A Novel

    Written by Margaret Atwood

    Narrated by Kimberly Farr

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale

    From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Blind Assassin comes a breathtaking novel about a woman grappling with the tangled knot of her life. Disturbing, hilarious, and compassionate, Cat's Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman-but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 19, 2011
    ISBN9780307939944
    Unavailable
    Cat's Eye: A Novel
    Author

    Margaret Atwood

    Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in more than forty-five countries, is the author of over fifty books, including fiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, now an award-winning television series, her works include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; The MaddAddam Trilogy; The Heart Goes Last; Hag-Seed; The Testaments, which won the Booker Prize and was long-listed for the Giller Prize; and the poetry collection Dearly. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in Great Britain for her services to literature. She lives in Toronto.

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    Reviews for Cat's Eye

    4/5

    2,061 ratings80 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      I wasn't sure about this at the beginning which is set in Toronto Canada in the 1950's. Elaine is a young girl with parents who do not quite fit the mold of the community. When school begins, she gains some girlfriends, mainly Cordelia, Grace, and Carol. The first half of the book focuses on the childhood torments that the girls inflict on Elaine who is their "friend." Elaine is the narrator of the book throughout. Interspersed with the childhood chapters, are chapters of the adult Elaine who is returning to Toronto for an exhibition of her art work.The chapters of Elaine's college experiences, early marriage including motherhood are the best for me. The author captures the reality of women attempting to come to terms with all the expectations of life. How do those early years of girlhood affect the lift of a maturing woman.This is an early look at feminism as seen through the eyes of one woman who must come to grips with her own past.
    • 4/5
      Beautifully written like all Atwood's novels, but this is a bit of a slog in parts because it is so heavily detailed that it's hard to tell what's relevant and what's window dressing (literally). I hope this was cathartic for her to write. Not for first-time Atwood readers, but fans may like it.
    • 4/5
      Mesmerizing like a train wreck! Such a great portrayal of bullying between girls and the repercussions of childhood trauma.
    • 4/5
      I liked this better than the other Atwood books I have read. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it's the most realistic one. Though Elaine Risley grew up a generation earlier than I did, I could relate to her and her childhood in a way that I wasn't able to relate to characters in her other novels.
    • 4/5
      This is my 250th book from the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. I chose to read this book for that milestone because I am Canadian and Margaret Lawrence is the Canadian author on the list with the most entries. It was only on the list for the 2006 edition so maybe Boxall felt it didn't live up to the rest of her books which is what I thought as I read this. There are the trademarks of the usual Atwood, wit, devastating commentary about people's foibles, philosophical musings but it just didn't completely click for me. I suspect it was because I found the protagonist unlikable and that is quite often a problem for me.Elaine Risley is a moderately successful painter living in Vancouver but originally from Toronto. She has returned to Toronto for a retrospective of her work being put on at an art gallery run by women. Her work is seen as being in the forefront of the women's liberation movement and therefore deserving of respect. Her return has triggered an avalanche of memories of her life in the city for her, particularly her childhood years. She and three other young girls were close friends but there were undercurrents of abuse in this friendship. Her relationship with Cordelia, in particular, was turbulent. In one memorable scene Cordelia threw her hat over a bridge onto the ice of the stream below and told Elaine to go fetch it. As Elaine floundered through the snow and then fell through the ice Cordelia and the other two vanished. In later years Cordelia asked Elaine for help and Elaine refused. Now, back in Toronto, Elaine thinks she sees Cordelia everywhere and expects her to show up at the opening of the retrospective. The chapters about the girls' friendship were very uncomfortable to read. Girls can be quite cruel to each other and there were certainly ups and downs in my childhood friendships which I regret now. I don't think I ever treated anyone as badly as these girls did (and if I did let me state my abject apology now). Elaine did manage to extricate herself from this relationship which is certainly praiseworthy. However, it seems to have damaged her ability to have a trusting relationship with anyone else. She left her first husband, Jon, to move to Vancouver with their daughter. Her second husband is very supportive of her but while she is back in Toronto she sleeps with Jon and doesn't even seem to feel regret. Even her relationships with her parents and her brother seem remote although, in her brother's case, that could be because he doesn't keep in touch much. I actually liked the way the brother was portrayed. He is exceptionally smart, probably a genius, and preoccupied with thoughts of the universe but lets his younger sister hang out in his room reading comic books. He grows up to become a renowned astrophysicist but there is a charming story about how he got arrested because he was pursuing some butterflies and crossed into prohibited government grounds without realizing he was trespassing. His death is probably the moment I will remember from this book.If someone asked me for a recommendation of an Atwood book from this list Cat's Eye would not make the cut. I would recommend The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace wholeheartedly but I really think that Atwood has gotten better with age. The MaddAddam trilogy is terrific and her rewrite of Shakespeare's Tempest, Hag-Seed, is maybe my favourite book so far this year.
    • 4/5
      To decide to enter the fictional world transposed by Atwood is to willingly expect to submerge yourself into her protagonist's psyche -- because that's the power of her work. Regardless, of how unwilling you think you may be to be drawn into her story and/or stories (I pluralize this because she usually has more layers than one), you will have no choice to either be hypnotized or embodied by her world because the voice of her narrative is always so strong.

      When I say strong, I'm not referring to the tone of voice or the strength of the characters themselves---though this may very well be true of them---I'm referring to the power of her narrative because the voice she writes in---this inner dialogue---is able to excavate marvellous truths with such clarity, originality, and precision.

      Atwood is able to write with not only keen insight and provocative subject matter, she isn't afraid to offend you with jarring, raw imagery, language, or context. It's intentional in so far as she deliberately resists being conformed by stereotypical ideas or dogmas. What you expect to happen in novels, in how characters are meant to evolve, does not happen in the same way in Atwood's work. The rest comes from a well of either brutal honesty and truth on the part of the writer or the complete professional wizardry performed in the "magic" that Atwood creates with the written word -- or both, except there are no tricks with Atwood.

      Magic denotes supernatural forces that flow out from nowhere, giving neither its master control nor credit. Atwood's artistry is magical in that she cannot be duplicated or outshone. But her manipulation of the language, her word power and passion for it, and story writing and "showing" -- not "telling" is accurately and expertly devised. It is without a doubt, mostly due to her natural, gifted, and crafted talent. And of course, her dedication to doing the work. (Trust me, she did not pay me to say these things, nor do I say them in a vain hope that she will give me her autograph after a two-day line-up at a book festival and acknowledge me as more than one of the literary cretins who hopes to one day step in her very large, very pointy, red shoes. Okay, well...maybe a little.)

      And I think that's part of the reason why she's just as resented superficially on a global scale as she is worshipped -- the fact that she has been reigned as an iconic, Canadian, female writer and artist. The irony here, is that her ambition, drive, and self-confidence is what probably brought her to the iconic stratosphere, and no doubt, her natural talent as well -- but this exact kind of attention and glorification is what Atwood, I think, abhors -- and yet at the same time, on some atomic level, demands.

      But this inner requirement is not her focal point -- it's not the driving force in her writing or why I think she writes. It's the natural talent that compels her. Writing, for any good writer---for any writer worthy of being acclaimed as having an ounce or more of talent---is driven by compulsion.

      The words must come out. The story must be written down. There are no extravagant plans or blueprints. There is no trickery or shortcuts. There is only always, the writer, the compulsion, the muses, and the white page -- and then the actual act of writing.

      A good writer need not have "good" muses or even "many" muses. A good writer need only a supersonic ear to listen to the muse he/she has chosen as well as the inner rhythm of language -- but most importantly, a "seeing" eye that understands something regular Joes also know, but cannot articulate. A good writer is a translator of universal truths. A good writer understands this instinctively. A good writer cannot be taught or bred. A good writer can only be born -- and then ruthlessly working in solitude for many hours and years to sharpen his or her 1) craft, 2) pencils, and 3) ego.

      A bad writer can read many guidebooks, attend writing classes, and "feel" accomplished. A bad writer can even get published (Oh, man -- a lot of bad writers are published, which would explain the amount of bad reviews). Nevertheless, a bad writer will always be a bad writer. And it isn't a matter of opinion or even my opinion. It simply is an undeniable fact.

      You cannot teach talent. You cannot imitate authenticity. You cannot counterfeit gold and expect to get your dollars' worth. A bad writer cannot impersonate good writing. You cannot be a fraud. You either have it or you don't. And if you do, then it's not a matter of luck or literary providence -- it's a matter of tenacity, 10-inch-thick skin, and of course, a great agent.

      And Atwood is one of the privileged few who have "it" all. (Maybe not the 10-inch-thick skin -- writers usually don't, we simply pretend to. I suspect Atwood has had a lot of training.) But, give her credit, too. She's worked hard to climb the iconic ladder. Many writers are born with this elusive "it," but don't have the confidence or the stamina needed to create the work required to actually be recognized by both the literary community and by those outside of it.

      And she's resisted the stereotype that writers -- that artists, especially female writers, require self-deprecation, dramatic illnesses (mental or physical), a man, or a manic disposition that inevitably leads to suicide or mysterious death. She's resisted this because she's alive -- and well. How about that?

      So kudos to you, Atwood. Have another glass of red wine. You've heard it all before. Yes, so your stories and your characters are dark, sombre, and cynical. I've even heard from other people, that your work is "downright depressing." Damn right, it is! But it is also intelligent, poetic, stark, and dead-on. All the good words worthy of praise. All the praises for your good words.

      Maybe you are, too: dark, sombre, cynical, downright depressed. But, maybe you are the one character you continually re-invent in order to shape shift into who you need to be depending on the weather or your mood (or who is critiquing or interviewing you). Maybe you re-invent yourself not only in your stories, but in order to cover your scent from public reviewers and critics, like myself, who hunt you down with pigeonholes. I get it -- I think.

      Writing is the most vulnerable art available. There is no separating the divide between the writer and the work -- because there isn't one.

      No, there isn't.

      Not even when its said to be fiction. All good writers know that fiction---good fiction---is truth. Somewhere hidden behind commas, periods, and exhilarated exclamation points, it'll hammer you on the head. That is, if you can read. (Sorry, the literary snob is me just gave me a drop-kick.)

      You either love Atwood's work or hate it. For some of you, you won't even tolerate trying to understand it. But there is no in-between, no grey area, no fence to sit on. Atwood makes you choose.

      And she does so, in her novel, "Cat's Eye."

      (I'd go into slight detail "about" the story, but that's what I believe inside flaps are for. Okay, okay...I'll give you a hint:

      Elaine Risley.

      Go out, borrow or buy the book.

      Borrow or buy all her books.
      Be dazzled. Be star struck.
      Be jealous.
      I am.
    • 4/5
      The life of Elaine an artist and the events and people that shaped her life. Classic Atwood in tone and content.
    • 4/5
      A portrait of the artist, and for me a very convincing picture. Be patient, for the resolution of the whole story comes near the end, as we see how the main character has used her art to come to terms with the strange events of her life. Perhaps not as gripping and intense as 'The Robber Bride', but typical to Margaret Atwood,'Cat's Eye' is incisive, witty, probing, honest, poignant, and beautifully written. I suspect there is quite a bit of autobiography in there and I believe many people will see something of themselves in Elaine's life. Brilliant as always!
    • 4/5
      Really enjoy Atwood's style of writing and many of her childhood experiences, whilst in a different decade from my own were still very similar. Loved it.
    • 4/5
      A story describing the angst and confusion of a small girl growing up in the world of childhood "mean girls" and the effects it has on her for the rest of her life.

      An ominous feeling of dread and suspense filled the whole book as the story was told in small flashbacks by the protagonist. Not sure I really liked the main character by the end of the book, but definately a good read.
    • 3/5
      Lovely prose, dull story. Very slow until about the last 70 pages.
    • 3/5
      Well written. Not much happening. Lots of inside thoughts
    • 5/5
      When middle aged artist Elaine Risley goes back to her childhood home of Toronto for an exhibition of her work,, the memories come flooding back. Recollections of home and the regular environmental trips out with her entomologist father, and also of school, and the very ambiguous relationship of her nine year old self with one-time friends who become bullies. This is incredibly convincing writing, the nuances of the children's games are so vivid, and still echo in the mind of the potagonist decades on... Couldnt put it down.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this one very much but also found it very disturbing. This is a coming of age story of a young girl in the forties who is raised by her bright but not conformist parents and her very brilliant brother. They lived off the grid and she didn't go to public school for awhile and did not know how to live in social settings. She was naive and therefor vulnerable. I loved the writing. It was so wonderful from the wit to the deeply philosophical. The author makes this statement on the copyright page; "This is a work of fiction. Although its form is that of an autobiography, it is not one. Space and time have been rearranged to suit the convenience of the book, and, with the exception of public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should be be confused with the author's. I liked that the book's epigram came from Memory of Fire by Galeano which I happened to be reading at the same time. "Time is not a line but a dimension. Think of time as leaving a shape. You don't look back along time but down through it, like water.". The descriptions of the north woods, tent caterpillar infestations, marbles were things that brought back my own childhood memories. The meanness of girls toward Elaine was disturbing. It was traumatic and left her suffering PTSD. I also enjoyed the discussion of science, especially the parts about science tampering with our food. Finally, the last chapter brings us full circle and we now know why. Elaine is still in search of a lifetime female friendship. The final quote; "I have not done it justice, or rather mercy. Instread I went for vengeance. An eye for an eye leads only to more blindness." "The bridge is only a bridge, the river a river, the sky is a sky, This landscape is empty now, a place for Sunday runners." "This is what I miss, Corderlia: not something that's gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.". An interesting book and worthy to be reread some day.
    • 4/5
      The life of Elaine an artist and the events and people that shaped her life. Classic Atwood in tone and content.
    • 4/5
      “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 is a sort of coming of age novel that looks at self worth as a child, in this case a girl,tries to navigate the pitfalls of adolescence. Elaine is a renowned painter who has returned to her childhood city of Toronto at the age 0f 50 for a retrospective of her work. The city she returns to is very different from the city that she remembers of her youth but as she walks around the new art galleries, restaurants etc her focus is all on the past in particular on Cordelia, her childhood friend and chief tormentor.Elaine's first eight years is one spent on the road, living in motels, cottages and tents with her parents and older brother. In many ways it's an idyllic childhood, one spent with very little structure other than following the seasons. However, when her parents decide to settle into a house in a postwar suburb of Toronto she is ill equipped for life there. This is particularly true of her relationships with other ''girls and their doings.'' It is a terrifying place and at the centre of this is Cordelia. Elaine adores Cordelia but Cordelia, along with her two friends, begin a campaign of terror towards Elaine, mocking the way she walked, ate and laughed constantly pointing out her failings. Elaine endures it stating ''They are my friends, my girl friends, my best friends. I have never had any before and I'm terrified of losing them. I want to please.'' She finally frees herself from Cordelia's malign influence until as teen-agers, they briefly renew their friendship. However, over the intervening years Elaine has become the stronger one and she leaves Cordelia in her wake, going to art college, marrying, having a child herself but when her marriage begins to crumble she attempts suicide and flees Toronto with her daughter. The final time Elaine sees Cordelia she is a resident of a ''discreet private loony bin,''.Yet Cordelia is never far away. Elaine sees her in every self-doubt every insecurity. Every action has a reaction even if that occurs many years in the future.This is a novel of images some heartbreaking some strangely mundane. Atwood builds up the plot layer by layer, the seemingly ordinary transformed into nightmare, and shows that the effects of being bullied as a child never really leaves the victim no matter how conventional their later life may appear. This is well written but is not an easy read by any means but one which deserves to be read.
    • 3/5
      Elaine Risley, a painter in her late middle age, returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her work. Her visit triggers memories of growing up the daughter of scientist whose research focused on caterpillar infestations. In her early years the family was practically itinerant, traveling around Ontario to support her father’s research. When Elaine was about 8 years old he obtained a university professorship, and the family settled more or less permanently outside Toronto. Elaine is an awkward adult, but the seeds were planted in during those early years, when Elaine was the target of verbal abuse by her closest “friends”. As an adult, Elaine is especially preoccupied with Cordelia, the friend she simultaneously admired and hated, but lost touch with in young adulthood. Each section of the book begins with the present-day Elaine preparing for the retrospective, and then takes the reader through childhood memories, gradually building a complete picture of Elaine’s history in an attempt to explain Elaine’s adult character.While the structure worked, the overall effect fell flat. Elaine’s childhood hardships failed to capture my sympathy. Her awkward personality made me question her romantic exploits. Elaine also never came across as especially creative or artistic, making her an unlikely subject of a late career retrospective exhibition. As much as I admire Margaret Atwood, my experience with her novels is decidedly hit or miss.
    • 5/5
      Endlich wieder ein Buch, das mich begeistert hat. Die Qualitäten, die ich darin entdecke, machen mir bewusst, was ich in so vielen anderen Büchern und an so vielen anderen Romanfiguren vermisse.Der Roman erzählt von der etwa fünfzigjährigen Malerin Elaine, die anlässlich einer Ausstellung ihrer Bilder seit langer Zeit wieder in ihrer Heimatstadt Toronto ist. Wobei die Stadt erst zu ihrer Heimat wird, als sie sechs Jahre alt ist und das Nomadenleben mit ihren als Insektenforschern arbeitenden Eltern aufgibt, irgendwann nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.Ihre unschuldig-magische Welt mit ihrem Bruder als engstem Verbündeten muss sie eintauschen gegen ein Leben mit gesellschaftlichen Normen und Beziehungsgeflechten zu Gleichaltrigen, Lehrern, Nachbarn.Eine herausragende Stellung darin nimmt ihre beste Freundin Cordelia ein. Vertraute und gleichzeitig auf vorsexuelle Art sadistische Täterin, bestimmt sie über Jahre das Gefühlsleben der Ich-Erzählerin. Jedes Kapitel beginnt mit der heutigen Elaine, und fasst dann den Handlungsstrang ihres jugendlichen Ichs auf.Großartig fand ich daran vor allem das reiche Innenleben der Figuren, die Assoziationen, Träume, geheimen Welten von Kindern, die als reicher dargestellt werden als die von Erwachsenen.Die Schilderungen von Verlust (der Eltern, des Bruders, der Vertrautheit und Faszination der Kindheit, von so vielem anderen) sind schmerzhaft direkt und erlebbar. Und obwohl das Buch nicht traurig im eigentlichen Sinne ist, ist der Grundton melancholisch - gekappte Erinnerungen, abgebrochene Pfade, abgerissene Gebäude.Verwundert hat mich auch, dass viele angesprochene Themen überraschend aktuell sind. Aber das nur als Randnotiz, das Buch ist auch so sehr gut.Möglich aber, dass man als jüngerer Mensch viele der angesprochenen Gefühle und Gedanken nicht teilen kann.Trotzdem, absolut empfehlenswert.
    • 5/5
      'Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.' Cat's Eye immerses the reader into the murky psychological realms of memory, perception, identity and self-esteem and on how these aspects of our inner life are affected and mediated by and through our relationships with others. Specifically, it focuses on the formative relationships we make with our peers as children and the scars we may carry with us long after the cruel games of childhood are far behind us. Not only a gifted writer and master of plot, Atwood is an extremely astute observer of humanity and all our foibles and predelictions. There is something revelatory in her description of everyday interactions and the evocation of the small details that fill the interstitial spaces of life. The portraits of all the main characters are deeply compelling, especially in the sections covering the period of Elaine's girlhood.The story follows accomplished (and now middle-aged) artist Elaine Risley as she returns to Toronto, a city she abandoned many years earlier, to attend her first career retrospective. As is customary with narratives built around such reluctant homecomings, Elaine is forced to confront the ghosts of her Toronto past and the reasons she eventually fled to build a new life on the opposite coast.Atwood's excellent tale uses this premise to explore the relatively occluded world of female bullying and peer pressure. In part what we are given is a forensic study into the (non-physical) tools of feminine violence, as acted out among young 'innocents' of primary school age. It is an eloquent exploration of the experience of being bullied from the perspective of a nine year old victim. The novel also explores how the teenager, then the young adult and finally the mature woman copes with and processes this legacy, a period of time that lies in her psyche like a lead weight. As the reader we experience this by accompanying Elaine during various stages of her life (and the different levels of psychological and emotional development attendant on these phases). As a man I cannot confidently judge how well Atwood has captured the complicated friendships, hypocrisies, manipulations and power games between little girls and then teenage and adult women. But the picture she paints is persuasive and has the ring of authenticity. It certainly coheres with some of what I recall were my sister's experiences. And in terms of my own experiences of bullies and peer pressure as played out in the boys' corner of the playground, I am not completely unequiped to recognise the underlying gritty reality and universality of these portrayals. As a male reader I also feel that Atwood has given me one of the key things I look for in literature, which is an insight into an aspect of lived human experience that would otherwise be inaccessible to me.'The past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you can see it as décor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.'The central pivot point for the whole narrative is Elaine's complicated relationship over the years with her by-turns friend, tormenter and acolyte, Cordelia; who in the end just occupies the space of a human shaped guilt-ridden memory. Cat's Eye, on one level about bullying, on another level is really about identity and the desperate, needy actions of two young girls negotiating the obstacles of growing up, wanting to belong, and trying to carve out a space for themselves in a hostile or merely indifferent world. By witnessing the dependencies and independencies that make up Elaine and Cordelia's relationship we learn that victims aren't always victims, the strong may actually be the weak and that while forgiveness may not always be forthcoming, sometimes understanding and even pity may be in the end (but probably only after it is too late). For Elaine, after all the heartache, frustration and anger has been exhausted - or maybe merely confronted and overcome - what she is left with is an empty regret and an overwhelming sense of potential robbed; of what should have become a mature friendship enriched by decades of companionship instead stolen by circumstance, selfish decisions and the vicissitudes of life. And then wonder why we held onto our pain for so long. Wonder why we let it have a disproportionate influence on our life.In the end, Elaine discovers that friendship is important. No matter how independent and self-reliant we may become, how resilient, we still need these little alliances, these co-conspirators. Their absence can leave a gnawing gap in an otherwise full and happy life. 'But I began 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.'What makes Atwood an excellent novelist is she is very easy to read while also very engaging in terms of story. She is adept at creating expectation and interest. With Cat's Eye I found it was no chore to consume a lot of pages in a single sitting. Atwood also has an excellent facility for plot and pacing. As a novelist she has a great sense for maintaining proportion between various story elements when developing the plot; something too many other authors get impatient with and therefore rush to the story's detriment.In short, Atwood displays in this engaging book all of the skill and technique of an accomplished novelist and master of her craft who is not a dry practitioner but has a passion and need for storytelling.
    • 5/5
      Many of the reviewers here have rated this their favorite Atwood novel, and I would have to agree. I read it years ago, but remember wincing through the scenes of girlhood cruelty. They really brought childhood back to me. Love to reread this sometime.
    • 5/5
      Ever since reading The Handmaid's Tale, I have been scared--but anxious--to read more Atwood. I have a crippling fear that the next Atwood book I will read will be terrible, and my reasons for adoring and respecting her novels will be taken away from me. It's an irrational fear, but one that makes me nervous whenever I start a new novel of hers.

      However, once I'm past page 3, I'm hooked, and love it.

      Cat's Eye was no different. Although the novel is fiction, there are several bits of autobiographical truth to it. And that adds a layer of interest to the novel, but really what affects me is how much I can relate to the character. (And I'm not sure that's a good thing--but it is refreshing.)

      Elaine, a painter (not an artist), must go back to her childhood home...and face her past. That SOUNDS about the cheesiest plot ever, right? But in true Atwood style, she draws the reader in, and doesn't let you go until the end.

      A must read.
    • 3/5
      Having read several of her post apocalyptic works, this book felt more "normal" to me. It's Elaine's story, told by her over the passage of years, about her life experiences, the cruelty of children to each other that can scar your adult years, growing up during WW2 through to her present, all of it triggered by her return to Toronto to do a retrospective of her artwork.It was interesting, haunting, sad, & thought provoking by turns. I was prepared NOT to like this book, because there were a couple of her books that I wasn't all that fond of, & was surprised to find myself liking this one.
    • 4/5
      Atwood's prose and storytelling kept me going to the very end, although it was touch and go for me in the first half of the book because of the bullying. Sometimes, things just hit a little close to home.Elaine's story starts when she is young and her family lives out of the family station wagon going from place to place doing research for her entomologist father in Canada during World War II. They eventually settle down in Toronto, where Elaine and her brother enter the school system.Over the years, Elaine becomes best friends with a girl named Cordelia, who is the bane of Elaine's existence even after they go their separate ways.Told in flashback/memoir style, Cat's Eye is a retrospective of Elaine's life told while she's invited to mount a retrospective of her paintings back in Toronto, which she visits from her new home in Vancouver.While I did end up liking this book, it was pretty intense and I'm not convinced Cordelia ever got put into the box well enough.
    • 2/5
      like practice for the Blind Assassin.

      no discernible storyline and nothing to really care about for me. as many reviewers have said on Goodreads, it’s beautifully written as all of Atwood’s books are but i did not care about the goings-on. i had no perspective from which to perch. it seemed like the random memories of someone in the retirement home or even on their deathbed but no clues about whether or not those kinds of frameworks were in play could be found.

      maybe it’s partly due to the fact that i’m a male with childhood memories of boyhood friends and so forth and i can’t empathize or otherwise connect with what’s going on between the girls in their childhoods and lives. that kind of thing - being the “wrong” gender- has never stopped me before. i thoroughly enjoyed Atwood’s Moral Disorder about sisters and their lives. i cared about the people, found the situations interesting, and it delivered some deeper meaning to my head. the Blind Assassin was tolerable for me but i did not really care about the story or any of the characters, nor did i find it profound.

      Cat's Eye really did seem like it was some kind of preliminary draft or test for the writing of Blind Assassin. very similar in what it was saying and the way it was saying it. BA did it better by providing a harmonizing framework interspersed with clues about the bigger picture in the form of newspaper clippings and commentary.

      no, i did not like Cat’s Eye. i give it 2 stars for her poetic prose and being true to life not because it made me feel or think. i find myself saying this next thing very often but i think i say it with sincerity: maybe i’m just not able to see the genius in this?
    • 3/5
      The narrator of this novel is a middle-aged artist, Elaine, who has returned to Toronto to attend a retrospective of her career. This triggers a series of long extended flashback sequences, in which she remembers her childhood in the city, particularly her friendship with three schoolfriends, one of whom was a cruel bully; but she also remembers her college years and her early years as an artist. That bullying schoolfriend, Cordelia, haunts Elaine, even in the present – although the tables did eventually turn, and while Elaine never bullied Cordelia to the extent she was bullied herself, Elaine does recount how Cordelia unravelled over the years and eventually ended up in a sanatorium. If Cordelia’s decline is signposted throughout the novel, then I missed most of it, though her fall as an ironic mirror image of Elaine’s rise to success did seem a little too obvious. Cat’s Eye was a surprisingly easy read, and if the early chapters, detailing Elaine’s childhood, were a little grim and hard to take in places, there was plenty more in the novel to balance them. Worth reading.
    • 5/5
      I suppose I am a little biased as Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors but this book was amazing. The childhood story of ridicule and spite I was able to really identify with. Though Cordelia, Grace and Carol are Alison, Angela, Jennie and Sarah G. in my early 90's story it's all the same. Little girls are BRUTAL. They pick on the weakest. In reality it is only a reflection of their own imperfections and worries that bring out the worst in them. As an adult that's obvious but as a little girl that's as foreign a truth as understanding the falling of the Berlin Wall.

      Atwood's ability to describe the life of a painter trying to escape her childhood is not only moving but also poignant in prose. This story does not disappoint in even a single paragraph. The imagery only gives more credence to an already realistic story.

      I almost wonder if this book is semiautobiographical. Regardless it is worth reading again and again.
    • 3/5
      I read Cat's Eye when I was 15 and decided Margaret Atwood was strange because she's Canadian, not because she's Margaret Atwood.
    • 4/5
      A very good read. Reading this book from about 12 years ago was so enjoyable and reminded me of how much I like Margaret Atwood. She has marvellous insight into the minds of young women and girls.This is the story of one woman's triumph over a terrible childhood experience when she was psychologically bullied by her three "so-called" best friends. She was unable to share her trouble with her parents because they were her "so-called" best friends so she suffered thinking it was all her own fault. After she left home and went to live in the city to study art, she drifted dangerously but managed to come through it to a satisfactory career as a painter, a happy marriage and a great relationship with her own two daughters. A heart-warming finish to a delightful book.
    • 3/5
      Elaine, a famous artist is invited to Toronto where she grew up, to assemble a retrospective of her art. The combination of the retrospective and coming back to her home town causes Elaine to think over her life, including some very difficult friendships she had as a child. Normally I love Margaret Atwood. I listened to the audio version of this book (narrated by Barbara Caruso) and I found her narration to be soooo incredibly slow and depressing. I don't know if it was the book or the audio narration. Definitely not my favorite Margaret Atwood.
    • 4/5
      Cat's Eye is all about Elaine Risley and her passage through life. The opening sentences describe the structure the reader can expect from the book: "Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward and exist in two places at once." We will exist in two places at once with Elaine - in her present-day trip to Toronto for a retrospective show of her paintings, and in another kind of retrospective: that of her life, beginning at about age 6. Child-Elaine has trouble navigating the world of friendships, and Adult-Elaine feels the reverberations even many years later.It's a very quiet book - not that nothing happens, but they're the kinds of things that happen in ordinary lives. People are thrown together; people drift apart. Small joys touch us; larger tragedies do as well. But through all of it is Atwood's beautiful and engaging writing, and her statements of truth that sometimes sneak up on you just to connect with a thud. For me, the weakest part of the book was Elaine's time in her 20s, but it was more than made up for by the rest of the book. The parts about Elaine's early years particularly struck me, I assume because I recognized the feelings, if not the time period or specific events.Recommended for: anyone who's ever had the uneasy feeling that they might not fit in with their friends, anyone who still smarts from remarks made years ago, people who know life is messy and complicated and sometimes hard to understand while you're living it.Quote: "...I do of course have a real life. I sometimes have trouble believing in it, because it doesn't seem like the kind of life I could ever get away with, or deserve. This goes along with another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise."