Cat's Eye

Confession time: I quite like being really scathing.  It’s been quite a treat these last couple of weeks, reading things I haven’t enjoyed and thinking of ways to insult them.  It’s that whole thing Roger Ebert said, about negative reviews being fun to read and fun to write.  That being said, I was very glad to get back to reading something that I could actually enjoy.  The panacea comes in the form of Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, with a great dollop of nostalgia for my own childhood hitting me the midst of what I can only assume is a quarter life crisis.

Atwood’s book itself is (like The Blind Assassin) essentially the story of a Canadian woman living her life.  I have a real thing for Canada, so this is fine by me.  The story follows Elaine Risley on a trip from Vancouver to Toronto and subsequently down memory lane.  Elaine’s early years are spent following her entomologist father around the wilds of Canada, sleeping in motel rooms and tents, playing with her older brother and collecting bugs.  When she finally starts school in Toronto, she’s wildly out of touch with the other girls and falls in with a group of girls who are more sophisticated that her and bully her through the guise of friendship and education.  It’s this part I can relate to- growing up in a tiny village; we had to amuse ourselves climbing trees.  When I reached secondary school in the local town they had things like shops to entertain them.  The girls there would have been just horrified by the leeches in the village stream.

As Elaine grows up, the balance of power shifts.  The girls go to different high schools, leaving Elaine alone with her prime tormenter, Cordelia, who is now dependent on her for companionship.  As the two grow up and drift apart, with Elaine becoming an artist in Toronto’s feminist scene and Cordelia disappearing into a mental hospital after an unsuccessful suicide attempt.  Although Elaine refuses to help her escape, leaving her in an asylum, Cordelia remains present throughout the rest of the novel.  We’re left with this aching nostalgia for the way things might have been, missing something that will never happen and that would probably be unwanted if it did.

There are a couple of reasons why I’ve been so into this book.  Like I said, it reminds me of being and kid and fills me with a ridiculous longing for my teenage years of backstabbing quasi-friendships.  I know things are better now, what with my independence, personal financial security and friends that I actually like, but it made me miss being twelve nonetheless.  Part of it’s the feeling of getting older that comes every year around my birthday.  Elaine’s obsessed with her own aging and the feeling she’s not quite managing it right.  She says early on that she can’t believe she’s had her life and that goes along with another idea; “that everyone else [her] age is an adult and [she is] merely in disguise.”  It’s the same feeling I get every time one of my Facebook friends gets married or pregnant.  I think my love for Cat’s Eye comes back to that idea I had about Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions- this is a very good book, read at exactly the right time.

Next time it's Shroud by John Banville,,.