Cat's Eye - Hardcover

Atwood, Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385260075 ISBN 13: 9780385260077

Publisher: Doubleday, 1989

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

MARGARET ATWOOD is the author of more than twenty-five books, including fiction, poetry, and essays. Her most recent works include the bestselling novels Alias Grace and The Robber Bride and the collections Wilderness Tips and Good Bones and Simple Murders. She lives in Toronto

From the Inside Flap

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.

Reviews

YA-- When Elaine Risley returns to her hometown, Toronto, for a retrospective show of her paintings, she finds more than critical acclaim. Local streets, long-gone landmarks, and elements in the paintings themselves trigger memories of her transient childhood traveling across Canada with her entomologist father; of adolescence marred by the cruel teasing of three friends; and of love affairs with her first art teacher and mentor, and with Jon, her first husband. In addition, Elaine is haunted by thoughts of her chief tormentor/best friend, Cordelia, whom she last saw years ago in a mental institution. Atwood's focus on the inner landscape of Elaine's youth and early adult years will appeal to older teenagers.
- Alice Conlon, University of Houston
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.

When artist Elaine Risley returns to her native Toronto for a retrospective of her work, she is nearly overcome by the pungent memories of childhood. These memories are not so pleasant, for as Atwood observes with deadly accuracy: "Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized." Having spent her early childhood on the road with her entomologist father--and only her brother as playmate--she is initially stymied by these life-sized terrors; she is more at ease with boys than with the calculated cruelties of girls. Indeed, many readers will identify painfully with Atwood's deft descriptions of the betrayals, exclusions, and power plays of Elaine's friends. The consequences for Elaine--suddenly evident even in her art--must now be annulled through vivid recall. Childhood's particular anguish has been told before, but Atwood is exceptional in her steady, dry-eyed revelation of the truth.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385260075
• ISBN 13: 9780385260077
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 446