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!

"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 l...

“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 i...

Margie!It's a little tough-going to talk about this book, because the description makes it sound so Ya-Ya Sisterhood chick-lit. Girl/girl friendships, coming of age, an assembly-line presentation of messy sexual relationships, dadurdydurr. It's sad that a simple outline of the plot could potentially close off 50% (or more) of the population's interest in reading this book, because unlike her speculative fiction, this is less a plot-driven novel reveling in world-building, and more of a parade of...

When I was considering whether to read this or not, what flashed through my head was, “Do you really want to read a book about bullying?” I knew this was the book’s central theme. I thought, “What can I learn from this?” I knew, even before picking up the book, how despicable such behavior is. I knew where I stood, so I wondered what more could be learned.By reading this book one experiences on an emotional level the cruelty and the fear and anguish bullying inflicts on another. The experience b...

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 b...

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 th...

Pity-wanting PainReading 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 L...

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 c...

"Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise."Simply put, I worship this book. Cat’s Eye follows the controversial painter Elaine as she reflects upon her childhood and younger years when she returns to Toronto (the city of her youth) for a retrospective of her works. Her reflections stir up memories of friendship, longing, betrayal, love, hate, and pain. Especially haunting are her memories of Cordelia, a childhood friend with whom she had a c...

DNF. I just can't anymore. I tried so hard to get into this book, but it was so dreadfully BORING. It's been on my to-read list for ages, and the ratings are good, but it is just not a book for me. I left 2 stars because it wasn't BAD, just blah, and it could possibly be that I wasn't in the mood for a novel like this, but I won't be trying again.

Nearly impossible to write a review for such a masterful work as this. All I can do is write some of my thoughts while reading this. It's like a psychological character study. It's the feelings that are evoked. Everything is full of descriptions, the meaning belongs to the reader. Atwood brings me to the brink, then pulls back leaving me with a sense of uneasiness. Our lives can only be interpreted by us. Which of my own memories have been blocked, or purposely left unremembered only to surface

I read this not too long after reading Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays because this was one of his favorite novels whose form he discussed. I wanted to see how Margaret Atwood deconstructs time and memory. I wasn't disappointed. Time is deliberate and audacious in this novel. It is not alluded to by chapter headings or by a change in tense. Everything happens in the present, even though the present is sometimes past. Stylistically, it is fluid with descriptions so...

“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 surfac...