Cat's Eye [Hardcover]

Margaret Atwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1998

Controversial painter Elaine Risley returns from Vancouver for a retrospective of her work. Here, in Toronto, the city of her youth, she confronts the submerged layers of her past – her unconventional family, her eccentric and brilliant brother, the self-righteous Mrs. Smeath, and the two men Elaine later came to love in diverse and sometimes disastrous ways. But it is the enigmatic Cordelia, once her tormentor, then her best friend, whose elusive yet powerful presence in her life Elaine finally comes to understand. The realm of childhood and growing up, with its secrecies, cruelties, betrayals, and terrors, has never been so brilliantly evoked. By turns disquieting, humorous, compassionate, haunting and mordant, Cat’s Eye is vintage Atwood.


From the Hardcover edition.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

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 an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 462 pages
• Publisher: Perfection Learning (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812487915
• ISBN-13: 978-0812487916
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (131 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,353,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

MARGARET ATWOOD, whose work has been published in over thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid's Tale, her novels include Cat's Eye, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; and her most recent, Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize. She lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another winner from Margaret Atwood, September 28, 2003

By 

Ratmammy "The Ratmammy" (Ratmammy's Town, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Cat's Eye (Paperback)

CAT'S EYE by Margaret Atwood

In CAT'S EYE, Margaret Atwood tells the story of Elaine Risley, an avant-garde painter who finds herself reflecting on her tumultuous childhood when she returns to her home town of Toronto for a retrospective art exhibit. It has been many years since she set foot in Canada, where she grew up moving from place to place, due to her father's career as an entomologist. The story is told in flashbacks, as the story of her current life as a painter, on her second marriage, is told in-between the story of her childhood. Two plot lines run parallel to each other, until the very end when both the past and her present collide.

Elaine's first years were spent travelling with her family, never having a best friend. It is all she yearns for, to have a real girl friend. All she had during those early years was her brother, who as he grew older drifted away from her, leaving her alone to fend for herself. When her father finally settles down and buys a house, she begins to make her first set of real friends. However, how does one define a friend? Elaine becomes part of a group of girls that seem to be living under the steel hand of Cordelia, the ringleader. Cordelia treats them all as if she was a dictator and they were her subjects, but her treatment of Elaine is totally unforgivable. Elaine is tormented to a point where her own mental health is jeopardized, and at one point one wonders how she ever survived.

But survive she did. As Elaine tells her story, we see how she developed from a very insecure and needy young girl to a woman who understands why she made the choices she did as a child, and became a very successful painter, secure in who she was and where she had come from. The key to her understanding is her friendship with Cordelia, the young girl who treated Elaine like dirt, yet towards whom Elaine felt a type of longing for, years after she had last seen Cordelia. It is a psychologically themed book, as usual, layered upon different levels of plots and subplots and characters. Margaret Atwood is the queen of this form of novel, and it is no wonder she is one of the best storytellers today. This was my fourth Atwood novel, and I will not hesitate to read my next. Although not as complex as THE BLIND ASSASSIN, nor as prophetic as THE HANDMAID'S TALE, CAT'S EYE stands alone as a great book that is a must-read for any fan. I give this book 5 stars.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Haunting Novel, October 21, 2001

By 

debra crosby (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cat's Eye (Paperback)

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 when I was too tired to do so. At first, I couldn't decide whether I liked it or not. Elaine, the protagonist, does not come across as a strong character; indeed, she is almost painfully introspective and introverted. Her inner life is rich, however, and her ruminations about her family and friends are quite perceptive. So I kept reading and allowed Elaine to reveal herself to me. As a girl, Elaine grows up in a family that is unusual, but loving and supportive of her. Her "friends" are another story. I don't think I've ever read anything that describes so well the cruelty that young girls are capable of. The social and psychological aspects of growing up are no better shown than here. However, this is the strongest part of the book. Elaine's adult life, colored as it was by her past, is not as richly portrayed, but she remains an interesting person. Her art is her catharsis, as personal and as difficult for an outsider to understand as is the artist herself. This book is an eerie coming-of-age tale, told with poetic beauty and sorrow.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grueling but gripping., August 26, 2005

By 

J. T. Towers "author and editor" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cat's Eye (Paperback)

Top 50. I've probably read this book three times. The first time, I was about 21 years old and maybe not far enough yet out of the hard kind of high school years that those of us glasses-wearing skinny smart loner girls have if we're not careful. One of the creepiest, scariest, saddest books I've ever encountered. Atwood gets inside the skin of a teenage girl not only scorned, but tortured by her peers. Gripping, and makes huge demands on one's empathy, compassion, and patience for the main character. Great moments of beauty, but real encounters with evil, apathy, and terror.