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From Amazon
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
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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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
One Star was too good,
By Gav (Hull, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Cat's Eye (Paperback)
First there were giants of the literary world: Joyce, Wells, and Wilde, geniuses who had mastered the human psyche and emotions and observed society in a brand new way. Then there was Margaret Atwood, annd she did writeth Cat's Eye and the world did cringe... and the lord sayeth to the world " See what your sins have brought you" and 'twas true, for this book was truly another plague upon the world. In short, we didn't like it. Margaret Atwood is nothing like these people. C.Donkin and G.Powell, two very embittered English students.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Atwood's best books,
By Dale Hrabi (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Cat's Eye (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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic and Intriguing,
By
This review is from: Cat's Eye (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.
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