Margaret Atwood

Years after painter Elaine Risley flees Toronto for Vancouver, she returns to search for long-missing parts of her life and pursue the elusive Cordelia, her best friend and sometimes enemy

Cat's Eye

A woman searching for her missing father travels with her lover and another couple to a remote island in northern Quebec, where they encounter violence and death

Surfacing

So so great that when I finished I immediately downloaded essays written about it. Atwood twice now has lulled me into what I think will be boring books and then leaves me with a punch in the gut. So excited to read more. 

Emma

Sohini Roy

Beautifully written- the language used as well as the intricate detail of every scene was incredible. I did feel myself disengaged at some parts however, where I felt the story was stagnant or a particular description had been dragging on for too long. I enjoyed the alternating past and present chapters as well and being able to sort of grow up with Elaine over the course of the book. My personal favorite quote was: "The past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you can see it as decor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into".

Amna A.

Second book I've read by Atwood, I found I really enjoyed her writing. The book is a deep dive into the character of Elaine, a middle aged painter, mother of two. The book starts off with a quote about time, "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." And the concept of time being non-linear and the fourth dimension in which we exist is reiterated throughout the book. We also see this concept present in the way the book unfolds, jumping between different timelines of Elaine's life and seeing their impact, more specifically how the impact of female friendships in a patriarchal society have shaped her choices and behaviour. Of those friendships is the childhood best friend. I found those parts where Elaine navigates the subtly brutal and harsh friendships with other preteen girls the most entertaining to read. Was comically familliar, almost uncomfortable. I liked the quote, "Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized."

I curently rate my *experience* of reading it a 4/5, because there's clearly so much more depth to the other themes in the book but I currently don't have the mental energy or the time to fully analyse them. Definitely deserves a reread.

once again reminded how brilliant margaret atwood is 

ellie 💐💌⭐️

Andrew John Kinney

Margaret Atwood's writing is so vivid, and so clear-eyed in looking at people and their intentions and limitations. This book is somewhat an artifact of its time - I immediately guessed it had been written in the early 1970's - but it is also timeless in many ways. It is also a compelling read, something I needed after struggling with a couple of the books I am "actively" reading; Atwood's prose never disappoints, and her cutting insights about human nature are witty and unsparing.

(view spoiler)[

The least believable part of the book comes in the last few chapters, when the narrator stops deceiving herself about her past and has what I suppose would be termed a nervous breakdown, though it seemed a bit more like a psychotic break. I have always struggled with the concept of a character deceiving themselves about an event in their past to the extent that they believe their invented history, and the character in Surfacing seems an unlikely self-deceiver because of her very realistic attitude toward the world in general. That said, the situation resolves itself somewhat believably, and I was not ultimately disappointed. Atwood also explored this idea of altered or invented memories in Alias Grace, but in a much more subtle way. (hide spoiler)]

Margaret Atwood has a knack for describing things, both pleasant and unpleasant, but more notably the things that most people would view as unpleasant. She calls out hypocrisy so diligently that it seems like a bit more than an avocation for her. The description of her character Elaine's childhood seems to match much of what is known of her biography; she and her family followed her father around the woods of Canada in warmer months while he, an entomologist, studied the insects that infest the boreal forest; so does Elaine. Like Atwood, Elaine has an older brother who is very bright, to whom Elaine is close. So perhaps we're seeing a glimpse of Atwood's childhood, certainly with artistic license employed. NB - there are spoilers ahead.

Because of Elaine's eclectic upbringing, she is chosen by Cordelia, whom Elaine first thinks of as a friend, to be bullied and toyed with, and Elaine, who is naive about suburban living when she moves to Toronto, sees friendship with Cordelia and Grace Smeath as an avenue to learn the ways of her new home. But soon she finds herself dreading their company, and she begins a cycle of self-harm driven by Cordelia's relentless denigration of her that only abates when her family departs for the northern woods each summer. Ultimately, after a life threatening episode of bullying and a grim realization about the two-faced Christian generosity of Mrs. Smeath, Grace's mother, Elaine breaks free of Cordelia's spell.

Ms. Atwood employs a device in this novel which is very similar to the one used in Surfacing and to some extent in Alias Grace: a completely repressed memory which is later retrieved. I always struggle with this, because such willful forgetting would be impossible for me, but I suppose it may happen to certain people, sometimes. For me, this was the only part of the novel that didn't ring true, but that's because of my lack of belief in the ability to repress memories, at least to the extent described in Cat's Eye. But in the interest of enjoying Atwood's amazing talent, I set that objection aside.

Atwood's clear discomfort with the trappings of successful society matches my own. It is obvious that her love of simplicity, of lack of ornamentation, of doing what is really necessary (traits she probably picked up camping with her family in the wilderness all those years) makes it difficult for her to understand and empathize with those who care about fashion, stylish chit chat, or posh events. Her general liking for men makes her unlike many contemporary woman writers, and she acknowledges that she is different in that regard. It also makes her an excellent writer of male characters, as in her MaddAddam trilogy.

For me, Cat's Eye started slow, but then sped up as I read along, and Atwood keeps the reader guessing, so it was an engaging read. I kept stopping to read her best sentences or most pungent observations, of which there are many . She is a master of language. The first time, years ago, that I mentioned to my sister I was reading an Atwood book (Blind Assassin), she said, "Hmmmm...bleak". Yes, Atwood can be that way, but I love her realism about the human existence, which is in fact often bleak, and sometimes happy, depending on the individual.

I look forward to my next Margaret Atwood novel.

Briar's Reviews

This book was a tough read for me. The copy of the book I have made it sound like a real thriller! I thought I was going to get a mystery/thriller book from the almighty Margaret Atwood. Since I was expecting that, this book didn't sit well with me. It was not the mystery or thriller I hoped for, but rather a character study of going crazy in the woods looking for.... something.

I would have liked this book more if I had an English professor breaking down Atwood's incredible prose and storytelling. I'll be doing that myself now with a little research, but for what I thought it was... not as good. Because I went in with a synopsis that didn't reflect the book well, that leads to my two star ranking. The prose is good, but it just didn't keep me with it well.

Two out of five stars.

Gavin

Ponderous and mean, gnomic and agnostic, as usual. Lots of good details about oafishness and gendered crappiness between and within genders, as usual. Her friend applying makeup is

  a seamed and folded imitation of a magazine picture that is itself an imitation of a woman who is also an imitation, the original nowhere, hairless lobed angel in the same heaven where God is a circle, captive princess in someone's head. She is locked in, she isn't allowed to eat or shit or cry or give birth, nothing goes in, nothing comes out. She takes her clothes off or puts them on, paper doll wardrobe, she copulates under strobe lights with the man's torso while his brain watches from its glassed-in control cubicle at the other end of the room, her face twists into poses of exultation and total abandonment, that is all. 

The anti-Americanism of the (Canadian) protagonists - so venomous it actually deserves the full title racism - is funny. It hides behind deep-ecology and Romantic critique: 
  It doesn’t matter what country they’re from, my head said, they’re still Americans, they’re what’s in store for us, what we are turning into. They spread themselves like a virus... Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbled, and I couldn’t help him...

My country, sold or drowned, a reservoir; the people were sold along with the land and the animals...

I realized it wasn't the men I hated, it was the Americans, the human beings, men and women both. They'd had their chance but they had turned against the gods, and it was time for me to choose sides. I wanted there to be a machine that could make them vanish, a button I could press that would evaporate them without disturbing anything else, that way there would be more room for the animals, they would be rescued


David (a rapey leftist idiot) is anti-Yank from the start, but the narrator eventually sinks into a similar kind of hallucinatory environmentalist racism, as part of her rejection of 'the city' and the modern world.

It's unclear why her friends are her friends, since they are trivial and cruel, as she is (initially) not. There's maybe one sympathetic character in the whole book, a taciturn Quebecois handyman who doesn't symbolise much of anything, as far as I can see (not the city, sure, but neither her mystical primitive).

The narrator is full of non sequiturs like "If you tell your children God doesn’t exist they will be forced to believe you are the god", little anti-rational digs which never go challenged. Just because both revolution (David) and the status quo ("Americans"), men and women, are awful, doesn't mean that nature is any better.

She starts off with strong run-on stream of consciousness - 
  I slide my tongue around the ice cream, trying to concentrate on it, they put seaweed in it now, but I'm starting to shake, why is the road different, he shouldn’t have allowed them to do it, I want to turn around and go back to the city and never find out what happened to him. I’ll start crying, that would be horrible, none of them would know what to do and neither would I. I bite down into the cone and I can’t feel anything for a minute but the knife-hard pain up the side of my face. Anaesthesia, that’s one technique: if it hurts invent a different pain. I’m all right.
 - but apparently forgets this sentence structure about halfway through.

Oddly, it's sort of mirror of 
  An American Dream
: the same atavism, same disgust with modernity, but with violence suffered rather than gleefully inflicted.

Surfacing gets called 'important'. I suppose because of the affectless, doubting-feminist agency of a divorcee angle; I hope it isn't because people think the protagonist had an admirable spiritual journey when really she's driven insane by mistreatment and boredom.

A re-read for me this year, and far more relatable as I get older and begin grappling with some of the same issues as the middle-aged narrator. Love the author, love the book.

Sarah Erle

Claudia Ganea

Although this book was very, VERY tough to read at times (maybe due to my own slowness? maybe because it's uni-required??) I related to Elaine's inherent sense of inadequacy the most; I saw myself in her, and that always makes for a character that'll stay with you forever.

Cat's eye

Alexia

I can’t stop thinking about this book, so I’ll erase the previous review until I can gather my thoughts completely and process them before changing the rating and writing a new review.

Kate

I can hardly remember this (which happens to me a lot...) - I'm not even sure I finished it? I might need to reread.

Amber Laha

By the author of The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace Elaine Risley, a painter, returns to Toronto to find herself overwhelmed by her past. Memories of childhood - unbearable betrayals and cruelties - surface relentlessly, forcing her to confront the spectre of Cordelia, once her best friend and tormentor, who has haunted her for forty years. 'Not since Graham Greene has a novelist captured so forcefully the relationship between school bully and victim...Atwood's games are played, exquisitely, by little girls' LISTENER An exceptional novel from the winner of the 2000 Booker Prize

Joseph Keenan

Last book of the year. Best book of the year. By far.

Amy Buckle

Cat’s Eye is a novel which jumps around in time, but follows the story of Elaine, and her life so far as she moves back to her home town of Toronto. Speaking in the first person, Elaine describes her somewhat unconventional upbringing during... read the full review here: https://www.amybucklesbookshelf.co.uk...

Surfacing.

Jacob Reader

Shae

Mathilde Fichant

Francesca

Jordan Card

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.