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We have just started reading another historic Booker shortlist in The Mookse and the Gripes group. This time the year is 1989, and although The Remains of the Day is one of my favourite Booker winners, this one must have come pretty close.

The narrator is Elaine, an artist who has returned from a new life in Vancouver to Toronto, the city where she spent most of her formative years, to attend and supervise a career retrospective exhibition.

Each of the book's sections begins with a short introductory chapter set in the present and proceeds to tell another part of her life story, these start in childhood and gradually catch up.

The dominant relationship is the one with her childhood friend Cordelia. At the start of the book Cordelia is presented as a scheming and manipulative bully. This part of the story is powerful and very believable, and culminates in an incident where Elaine almost drowns after falling through ice while trying to recover a hat Cordelia has thrown off a bridge.

Later in childhood the balance of power in their relationship changes. Elaine becomes more successful and Cordelia more needy, and it becomes clear that Cordelia and the need to resolve their relationship still haunts Elaine as an adult.

The best parts of this book are very strong, but perhaps it is a little too long. The sections on Elaine's development as an artist and her marriages were less interesting, but did allow Atwood to find humour in the gallery curator's attempts to find meaning in the personal pieces.