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. Disturbing, hilarious, and compassionate, Cat's Eye is a breathtaking novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knot of her life.
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Cat's Eye is one of Margaret Atwood's most intriguing novels, a ruminative, symbol-laced, and deceptively loose book that encompasses many of the concerns of her earlier works, compounding them with a new awareness of aging and the curious vagaries of memory. Its premise is simple enough: Elaine Risley, a successful painter living on the West Coast, returns to Toronto, the scene of her childhood and artistic development, for a retrospective of her work at an independent feminist gallery. As Risley arrives in Toronto, she begins to examine her past in that city, from her early girlhood through to the final days of her first marriage. Risley's memories dominate the book; her exhibition is a light but important counterpoint to all that has gone before it.
In a sense, Cat's Eye is a feminist deconstruction of the artist's coming-of-age novel, but Risley's feminism is skeptical and detached. Her painful girlhood friendships haunt her through her middle age, and she has far more sympathy for men than she does for the women who have supported her career. As a result, Cat's Eye transcends orthodox feminism and rigorously examines troubling questions of gender, sexuality, and art from a wryly nonpartisan perspective. Fans of Atwood's more recent novels will love Cat's Eye, but it is a book that deserves the attention of her numerous detractors; perhaps it will encourage them to give her a second look. --Jack Illingworth --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Herself the daughter of a Canadian forest entomologist, Atwood writes in an autobiographical vein about Elaine Risley, a middle-aged Canadian painter (and daughter of a forest entomologist) who is thrust into an extended reconsideration of her past while attending a retrospective show of her work in Toronto, a city she had fled years earlier in order to leave behind painful memories. Most pointedly, Risley reflects on the strangeness of her long relations with Cordelia, a childhood friend whose cruelties, dealt lavishly to Risley, helped hone her awareness of our inveterate appetite for destruction even while we love, and are understood as characteristically femininea betrayal of other women that masks a ferocious betrayal of oneself. Atwood's portrayal of the friendship gives the novel its fraught and mysterious center, but her critical assessment of Cordelia and the "whole world of girls and their doings" also takes the measure of a coercive, conformist society (not quite as extreme as in the futuristic The Handmaid's Tale ). Emerging "the stronger" for her latecoming understanding of herself, Risley in the final pages rises above the ties that bound her, transcendently alive to the possibilities of "light, shining out in the midst of nothing." BOMC main selection.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Dale Hrabi
Format:Paperback
I've read all of Margaret Atwood's books, except Alias Grace. I read my sister's copy of Cat's Eye when if first came out and remember thinking: "hmmm, kind of a rehash of themes from earlier books," specifically Lady Oracle, in which menacing ravines also figure. It seemed a so-so, traditional effort after the more obviously audacious Handmaid's Tale.
Recently, however, after 9/11, i went through a phase where I couldn't read, couldn't find a book that could hold my attention, lead me into its world, make me care.
Came upon Cat's Eye in a thrift store. Revelation: how much stronger and sure-stepped it seems to me the second time. Atwood's expert handling of the slow power shift between Elaine and Cordelia affected me more deeply this time, perhaps because I've lived longer now and have seen strong friends falter and others, once dismissed as "quiet," emerge as the real, fierce talents.
Don't hesitate. Read it.
By David Sabine
Format:Paperback
I won't say anything that hasn't already been told by other reviews of this book, except that this is the novel which made me really love Atwood.
By Heather Marshall Negahdar
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
"If I were to see Cordelia again, what would I tell her about myself? The truth, or whatever would make me look good."
This novel started off at a fast pace and kept me glued to the pages. Elaine is the victim of the bullying of a group of three girls who are considered her friends. Although they are supposed to be friends they make Elaine a scapegoat for everthing that happens in the three girls' lives. She is obedient to their punishment, becasue she thinks she really deserves it. But suddenly one day that all changes and we are brought into the the future lives of these young women. Not a bad book but very detailed, and towards the end I was gettinga little weary of it.
Reviewed by Heather Marshall Negahdar (Sugar-Cane- August 21st, 2010)
This novel started off at a fast pace and kept me glued to the pages. Elaine is the victim of the bullying of a group of three girls who are considered her friends. Although they are supposed to be friends they make Elaine a scapegoat for everthing that happens in the three girls' lives. She is obedient to their punishment, becasue she thinks she really deserves it. But suddenly one day that all changes and we are brought into the the future lives of these young women. Not a bad book but very detailed, and towards the end I was gettinga little weary of it.
Reviewed by Heather Marshall Negahdar (Sugar-Cane- August 21st, 2010)
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4.1 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
so true...
I am a seventeen year old girl and this book really struck a chord within me. The things that the girls did to Elaine sent a chill down my spine but they didn't shock me. At all. Read more
Published on Mar 23 2005 by "nikki_bluesky"
5.0 out of 5 stars
...a sustained poem.
Being male, I found that reading this book along with my female friend helped me to appreciate it more than I would have on my own. Read more
Published on Mar 31 2003 by Cipriano
4.0 out of 5 stars
One to keep
This was a book that was loaned to me and I read it to kill some time. It has become one of my favorite books. I actually read that original copy to pieces. Read more
Published on Feb 27 2002 by Lissa Glide
3.0 out of 5 stars
Magical Marbles Don't Help Elaine
"Cat's Eye" was a good example of the cruelties that little girls face during their childhood. Read more
Published on Feb 15 2002 by Whitney Homan
2.0 out of 5 stars
Cat In the Cat's Eye
Reading Margaret Atwood -her work, the "cats eye" was emotive in a vituperative out pouring of all that wants to be seemingly human and ratiocinatively inhuman in torrents that... Read more
Published on Dec 8 2001 by Stephen Deed Locust
3.0 out of 5 stars
Relationships
This was a wonderful read about the growing pains that most young women go through and the way that we learn to become functioning adults. Read more
Published on Nov 29 2001
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Haunting Novel
Other reviewers have used the word "haunting" to describe this novel, and I must agree. This book stayed with me long after I finished it, and compelled me to read even... Read more
Published on Oct 21 2001 by debra crosby
4.0 out of 5 stars
A rich and compelling book
I enjoyed this book a lot. Although parts of it were quite disturbing, Atwood refrained from going too far. Read more
Published on Aug 2 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars
painfully beautiful
This book is so colorful! I don't so much like the last 150 pages or so as much as I like her girlhood accounts. Torturesome they are, but not out of the palette of human cruelty. Read more
Published on July 31 2001 by Daisy S. Blakelock
2.0 out of 5 stars
First half good, second part really dull
I enjoyed reading the first part of this part, about Elaine's childhood--and could very well relate to the cruely and power plays which do occur among young girls in our society. Read more
Published on May 6 2001 by Justine Cardello
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