Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

Cat's Eye Reviews

• 
  karen

  i know for a fact that books were written and published after this one but i can't for the life of me understand whycome to my blog
• 
  Lisa

  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 goThis 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 any 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 awayI 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 childShe 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 herMy 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 sensitive 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 developmentThey 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 isYou 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 existenceRecommended to those who are brave enough to face the true life of children often too hard to retrospectively bear for grown ups
• 
  Samadrita

  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 relationshipsyou 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 They are Cordelia's; as they always were
• 
  Candi

  “I began then to think of time as having a shape something you could see like a series of liuid 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 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 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 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 uestion the same way and likely we can’t truly answer it at all Elaine wrestles with this as an adult and 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 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”
• 
  Michael

  One of Atwood's 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
• 
  İntellecta

  Katzenauge is one of the many novels of the well known Canadian author Margaret AtwoodIt is the story of two women and their friendship; a friendship that became hostility a story about childhood about growing upThe 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
• 
  Cecily

  What it's aboutWe 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 uite amusing eg discerning the mysteries of puberty There is also a fair bit about art and artists with a dash of early feminism Plot structureElaine is an artist in her late fiftiesearly 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 uite 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 bulliesI’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 familyCoping strategiesElaine 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 uestion 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 alarming attitude based on the fact that Elaine is a heathenEventually 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 conseuencesI 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 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 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 antiue 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 alsoA 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
• 
  J.L. Sutton

  “Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes you can see 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 bulliesfriends 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 eually 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 425 stars“Potential has a shelf life”
• 
  BlackOxford

  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 memoryThe story is three dimensional the NorthSouth dimension of her life with her parents who migrate every year from Toronto to the Laurentians on biological field trips; the EastWest dimension of her independent life which stretches from Toronto to Vancouver; and the temporal dimension of her own maturationPeriodically 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 uicklyElaine'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 rationaleShe 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 inadeuate for the world she inhabits now She realizes that her life is a ruin with no obvious cause for its ruinationSo 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
• 
  James

  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 otherThe 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 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 pastThe subseuent 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 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 nothwithstandingunderlying 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 trajectoryalways 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 livesThis 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 conseuences 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 pervadingIt 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 sophisticated and complex than that 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 thisI will leave you to decidePerhaps 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 autobiographicalThis is a novel about the circularity of life and of time – this much is clear from the opening page It is about the endings and the beginnings – the beginnings and the endings – the child within us is always there the past is always ever present always with us“Time is not a line but a dimensionnothing goes away” Whilst possibly not uite 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