Cat's Eye

"This is the story of “frenemies”—sorry to use that word. Elaine is our protagonist and she’s a painter and she’s middle-aged. She’s going back to Toronto forty years after she grew up there. She is haunted by memories, and specifically one girl from the past: Cordelia. While she’s in Toronto, memory is used as a narrative tool to take us back to these episodes of childhood, when Elaine was very young and looking for a friend. She wants to be with the girls, and to do what the girls are doing. Cordelia, unfortunately, is a complete bully and a sadist and tortures Elaine in many ways. The whole thing builds to a damaging, destructive, horrible experience, that even forty years on Elaine hasn’t shaken. It’s still very fresh and raw. It’s ultimately so sad, but what stops it wallowing in despair is Atwood’s writing. You think “how can you get meaning and, wit, and wisdom in every sentence?” It should be too rich to read, but it isn’t: she’s a great chef with words, even though she’d probably hate that description. She balances it all perfectly. It’s inspiring and off-putting at the same time. I read an interview with Atwood recently where she said feminism’s main job at the moment is to tackle male violence. I think that is true, that and equal pay. But within this book—published in 1988—she looks at the way women look and are forced to look. That’s the focus when Elaine is growing up and searching for a way to be a correct-looking female. Atwood explores how gender stereotyping is set up physically and in terms of beauty and what’s feminine and pretty and attractive to men. Even the all-powerful, mighty, bully figure of Cordelia doesn’t escape that. She might be a bully in the female hierarchy of this book, but in the bigger picture—against men—she’s as disempowered and without agency as most women. I’m very interested in the cusp of adulthood for women. I think all these writers are too. They’re looking at adolescence—or protracted adolescence, if you’re looking at college years. You have a great mix of feelings, of potency and agency, especially for women. When you start having your periods, you can literally have the world inside you, and the future inside you. You have all that sense of power and wonder, but you’re terrified because you know you’re moving into a world that’s run by men and you’re going to be crushed from the outside. It’s that mixture of vulnerability and power that I think is so interesting. Maybe the characters that I’ve explored have recognised that their intense friendships with women would give them a side-road away from having to fulfil social expectations. I believe that in that period of burgeoning sexuality teenagers find a place to channel all that fire and fury that is also a safe place. Quite often teenage girls will chose a popstar, or a teacher, someone they can’t actually have a physical relationship with, because that physical reality immediately restricts you."