First Book of the New Year

The first book I've read this year is by one of my favourite authors - Margaret Atwood. I was given The Blind Assassin as a Christmas present not long after it came out in 2000 and I've been hooked ever since.

What I love about Atwood is her ability to write in such different genres and yet each has a voice which is unmistakably hers. For instance, The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake are often considered sci-fi, whereas The Robber Bride is about (on the surface) middle-aged friendships and the spectre of a femme fatale.

This one, Cat's Eye, was totally different again. I read it in two days and was captivated. It tells the story of Elaine, now a successful painter but once the victim of school bullying. Atwood vividly captures the spitefulness of little girls, creating the obvious monster with Cordelia, who torments Elaine for not being like the others. However, Cordelia is enabled by her two cronies (and supposed friends of Elaine), Carol and Grace.

Grace persuades Elaine to come to church with her, and it is her mother, Mrs Smeath, who causes the most damage to the young Elaine.

Alongside these reflections of Elaine's, back in her home-town of Toronto for a retrospective of her work after nearly 30 years away, is a beautiful back-story about her unconventional family life - her father works 'in the field' studying a range of bugs, which her mother assists him with, and her brother Stephen is her ally and friend, who becomes more drawn into the world of science. When they settle in Toronto, Elaine and Stephen spend most of their time in the labs of the Zoology department of the local university, looking at all manner of things under microscopes.

This is not simply a story of children, though. We see Elaine in her adult relationships, at work and at college, and how she views the world. What Cat's Eye does is to show us how even the smallest incidents (Elaine has no recollection as a teenager of a traumatic event which nearly killed her) shape us a people for many years to come.

As an aside, I was startled to find memories coming back from my own childhood, where several girls in my class (ostensibly my friends) decided that I needed 'improving' and at one point dedicated an entire day to just that. I was required to bring a dress from home, and my hair was brushed and make-up was applied. I was 'taught' how to throw and catch a ball, what to say and how to behave. This, and other similar incidences, were deeply humiliating at the time. Unlike Elaine, however, this lasted only a short time, and I don't feel haunted, as she was, by the memories. The girls in my class were about 10, and Elaine and Cordelia were eight, and it demonstrates most of all that the meanness and inventiveness of children being cruel to others cannot be underestimated.