Cat’s Eye
By Margaret Atwood
Vintage, 1998, 480pp.
The Short of It:
What a read. Took me forever to get to it, but so glad I did.
The Rest of It:
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 the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. ~ from the publisher
When I chose this book for club, some online readers immediately warned me that it was a rough read. Oddly enough, I didn’t get that at all. Yes, maybe some childhood trauma in relation to bullying but honestly, I’ve experienced much worse. Instead, what I felt was a return to our younger years. The formative years where what others say, shape you.
Also, the impact of friends and their parents. You never know what a child is remembering or how any act of kindness or cruelness is perceived. Elaine Risley runs around with a pack of girls, a pack. You know the kind. The kind with a ringleader. The kind where every action is scrutinized and your membership in the group hangs on every word that comes out of your mouth.
Elaine is a painter though. Everything that she takes in, eventually comes out on a canvas. Her art is controversial. Criticism abounds and yet, she manages to find places for her work to be displayed and has made a name for herself. She calls herself a painter but not an artist. Interesting. As if just the title of artist means something less than what it is.
But those girls. It made me think about gender and how it plays a role in cruelness. Girls can be mean. Very mean. Their words are like daggers and their criticism can slice right through you. Boys can be mean, but I’d argue that they tend to be more physical. They can duke it out in a fist fight and be friends again by the end of the day.
The impact of those relationships in childhood is never ending. As we discussed the book, we could not help but revisit traumas we experienced in childhood. Bigger evils, lesser. It’s all relative but what happens to you in childhood sticks.
Atwood is an amazing storyteller. She can pivot on a dime and does. Her depiction of childhood is spot on. Highly recommend.
Source: Purchased
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Book Chatter 
Ti, I read this book many years ago and remember the storyline sort of. I do remember the ‘mean girls’ angle. Isn’t it crazy that ‘girls’ can be mean when they are 10 or 16 or 29 or 68!! I was always so introverted (or what was known as ‘shy’ at the time). And I was a bit terrified of the ‘mean girls’. You make me want to go back and perhaps read this one again. We’ll see.
Hope you are doing well. Nice to see a post from you and know that others think about you in between. 🙂
Thank you!! I am going to try to be more consistent. Work has been very challenging lately.
Cat’s Eye and the mean girl thing… I thought the trauma was rather mild compared to what I’ve experienced but the rest of my group felt quite differently about it.
Brave choice for book club. How many of the participants didn’t finish it? Low commitment readers can’t manage LONG books.
Oddly enough, they all finished. All 8 of them. They did say it was a bit slow at the start. I’d agree with that.
I followed it up with Oryx and Crake and good gawd that topic was a hard one to read. Review coming tomorrow.
Margaret Atwood is so good. I haven’t read this one (yet?) and it sounds good.
Atwood is very good. I really liked this one. It was a tad slow in the beginning. My club noted that right off the bat but it was quite good.
I was talking to someone the other day that it never fails to amaze me how things that happened to me as a child are still affecting me at 49.
Exactly. The stuff that happens to us in childhood stays with us in more ways than one.
I read this in 2020 and according to my review on my blog it took me two weeks to finish. I can’t say that I liked it, but I was glad I read it, if that makes any sense!
It was a little slow in that first half. Once I got past that I blew through it. It was very different from what people told me. They kept comparing it to Mean Girls. I didn’t get that so much.
I just counted and I’ve read 7 of Atwood’s books over the years but I have not read Cat’s Eye. So I’m curious about it and how it ends with the painter and the mean girls. Does it have a decisive ending? I have read Oryx and Crake … but not the rest of that trilogy. She’s coming out with a memoir Nov. 4 (Book of Lives) and it should be interesting.
A decisive ending… not really. In my mind yes but it’s ethereal.
I reread Cat’s Eye in 2020 and it was much darker that I’d remembered. It took a while to get through if I remember correctly. I’d like to reread The Robber bride next.
Now seems a good time to read Atwood—if one can bear the truth of it given these times. I have always wondered about what a world would be like if it were run by women. Less physically violent, maybe, but more emotionally violent?
A world run by women would be a very productive world.
This has been on my list to read for a while. I think I should move it up the list.
I think you would enjoy it.
I read this years ago; and was bullied and harassed through primary and secondary schools. Yet, when I read this; I ended concentrating on the artist, and her work, not the bullies. Two of mine apologized starting when we were forty, and I had lost my mother, and was discovering independence rather later than most. She’s a brilliant author, but I won’t be rereading this. It is too painful
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I am so sorry you had to experience that. I’ve read Atwood before but for whatever reason reading Cat’s Eye for book club sent me down an Atwood rabbit hole. I followed it up with Oryx and Crake, then The Year of the Flood and now MaddAddam. Those books are rough too for the child trafficking aspects but what a writer.