Review: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

Title: Cat's Eye

Author: Margaret Atwood

Pages: 446

Source: Personal library

Rating: 8/10

Summary (From book flap):

Painter Elaine Risley, pushing fifty, returns from Vancouver to Toronto for a retrospective of her work, which has been much celebrated by the women's movement and much attacked from other quarters.

Toronto is the city she fled many years earlier, hoping to leave behind the tyrannical and obsessive memories of her early life there -- from her post-World War II school days and fifties adolescence, through the avant-garde art scene of the sixties, to the advent of feminism in the early seventies.

Now, as she wanders the streets of the city, which are no longer puritanical and dowdy but resplendent with eighties glitz, Elaine confronts the submerged layers of her past -- her unconventional family, her eccentric and brilliant brother, the self-righteous and dangerous 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.

My Two Cents:

At first, I wasn't sure how I was going to like this novel. It didn't capture me right away like the other two Atwood works I've read, but as I continued reading, it had me hooked.

I really liked Elaine as a main character, although I liked her better in her younger form than as the mature, adult narrator. She had an unconventional childhood, especially for the first eight years of her life. She really, to me, seemed like someone I would have liked to have as a friend as a child. With a lot of her interactions with Cordelia, especially, she spoke to me as having a very typical young girl experience with groups of mean girls. Elaine was just a character who was easy to relate to and to see in myself and a lot of people I know.

While much of this book happens in the past and there really isn't a whole lot of action as far as everything in the book is leading up to this huge climax, I was incredibly interested in where Atwood was going to go. I liked that we saw Elaine as an adult, so we know how she turned out, but we were able to see her evolution and how she became the adult she is.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes Margaret Atwood or who just wants an interesting story that will keep you reading much longer than you had planned.

Review: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Title: The Blind Assassin

Author: Margaret Atwood

Pages: 521

Source: Personal library

Rating: 9/10

Summary (From book flap):

The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms of the 1930s and 1940s, The Blind Assassin is a richly layered and uniquely rewarding experience. The novel has many threads and a series of events that follow one another at a breathtaking pace. As everything comes together, readers will discover that the story Atwood is telling is not only what it seems to be -- but is, in fact, much more.


My Two Cents:


I have not read any Atwood for several years, and my only experience with her (Short of following her on Twitter!) is with The Handmaid's Tale, which is still one of my favorite books. I'm glad I expanded my Atwood repertoire, because I truly think she is one of the best modern writers. In my totally unofficial, based-on-two-books opinion, of course.


Atwood weaves a very complicated tale, moving back and forth between Iris' past and present, the text of The Blind Assassin and various news articles. She is able to switch her narrative voice to suit each need while still maintaining a through line and a cohesive feel to the book, which isn't an easy feat.

I liked the main character, Iris, much more as the narrative unfolded. At first, I felt sorry for her and realized she had gotten into a situation for which she was unprepared. As the novel went on, I continued to feel sorry for her because Atwood made it seem as if she was a totally helpless party in everything: Her marriage, the decline of her family's business, her sister's health. But, there were moments where Iris' strength and defiance shone through, partly in the narrative portions where she is older, but also in events from the past. Even though I could predict the big revelation that came at the end, it did not ruin my experience of the novel as a whole.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes good, solid writing and character development along with an interesting story (Who doesn't?).