Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood

This is a novel about carrying your past around with you in a bag, like the satchel of a traveller slung over one shoulder. Some people spend so much time with their head in the bag that they forget to look at what is going on around them.

Who is Cordelia? Why does she sit like a shadow in the background and when will we meet her. It begins with the innocence of a child, with fantasy female friends. A travelling scientist father with mother in tow leaves the girl and brother living as nomads. Eventually she becomes settled, the parent in a more permanent position, possessions sprouting and a new discovery. Real friends. Real girls.

She has to learn of girlish ways. The secret codes and rituals, familiar only with the ways of her brother. She finds a niche, then Cordelia comes and her past is fractured.

She is a successful artist, being interviewed, exhibiting but still the past haunts her. The ghost of Cordelia waiting to spring out and surprise her. Just what happened and why all the fear?

It might look on the surface, like a story about bullying and for a moment it is. More than that though it is a novel about power, the shifting chaotic tides of life. There is a line, in the book that talks about the relative. To an adult little girls are sweet, to little girls other little girls are life sized.

A bully might have power over an individual but it is a power constrained by time, and as time shifts so does that sense of power. There is a delightful little moment where a shift happens and the power changes hands but it isn't without cost; as with power comes ugliness. Sharpness. A slight betrayal of the self.

And as with physics, where energy is conserved and not destroyed, one goes flying forward energised while the other is diminished.

Atwood's sense of detail is present, taking a absolute sense of interest in her characters lives. The magic imbued in unlikely objects that can give us strength. This is up there with her best, even if not being the best, and a worthwhile read.