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I really hope that I will get a chance to reread Cat's Eye. Why? Because it is such a bloody masterpiece. While I enjoyed Atwood's short stories and other works of her that I read, this novel was definitely what made me love Atwood as much as I do. Cat's Eye is a story of a painter named Elaine, and it is a fascinating story with many flash backs and digressions.

Margaret's prose is beautiful and has a life of its own. She has a way of casually creating the atmosphere, catching vivid details and putting them in sentences like jewels on a string. What things smell like, what they taste like, she describes in detail, but she doesn't linger too long on descriptions, making the story flow easily. Nevertheless, just as you get settled, as you get pulled into a story, there is always a line that cuts deeper, reveals more, makes you see more than you were hoping for. Her cuts are always to the bone, she examines human psyche with the relentlessness of a biologist.

You have a feeling she is always observing things from various angles, making all kinds of guesses, setting hypothesis, experiments and always being brutally honest. Nothing is taboo for her, not even making fun of feminists. Atwood manages to create a well rounded story, fascinating characters and to explore a number of issues, to question a number of truths and ideologies, both past and present.

The novel is told as a series of memories of Elaine, a painter in her fifties ( or sixties, I can't be quite sure). The narrative is not chronological yet you are not left to wonder what period you're flying in when you start the next chapter because her voice is so unique in every period of her life. She is a different person at different times, she remembers different things, she chooses which memories to ignore and which ones to hold on to.

Elaine is as human as they get except the fact that most people are not as nearly as candid with themselves as she is. However, Elaine's wisdom sometimes feels more like a accident than an active decision. At times in her life, she just stumbles on truth and chooses to see it. In that sense she makes for a credible painter. Elaine is an excellent protagonist, both weak and strong, a survivor. Not are the other characters any less interesting, you get to know their weakness but also their sorrows. You see them trough Elaine's eyes and still you have a feeling that you're seeing them from more than one perspective. Maybe because Elaine is not afraid to be hard on herself. She doesn't idolize herself or other people, but she knows when to let go of hate.

The best part of the book for me is the one that describes Elaine's childhood. It is rarely that someone describes what growing up feels like so accurately. There are a lot of stories that talk of growing up or childhood but this one is something else and not just because of the bullying. Most stories about childhood focus on events in a way we look at old photos- safely from a distance, gathering memories like prizes, remembering the good old times.

The tale of young Elaine going trough bullying is chilling and disturbing but wonderfully written. You can really see how terrible it can be to be a child, to not be able to hold onto anything, to not have the words to describe your despair and the means to get out of it, or the knowledge that it too can pass. Why do adults think that children are something like dolls, not quite real, not able to feel or at any rate not able to feel depression, sadness or despair? Children feel as acutely as we do, sometimes even more. Have you ever noticed that popular culture portrays children as always smiling or if not that, then up to some mischief that will end up in laughter (and in commercials a popular brand of detergent can always take care of that kind of mess? Nobody really talks about children being unhappy. It is a sort of a taboo and that's really so wrong. The fact that we don't acknowledge that children need emotional and psychological support as much as we do, and probably even more is deeply wrong.

People forget that children not only feel, but that sometimes they feel more then adults and more intensely, because they don't have the rationality and the intellect (or experience) that adults can rely on to calm their emotions. Besides, parenting is really difficult so some people never do it, even if they are parents. After all, who is there to check how good job you're making or how much you care about your child? Children are like sponges, they absorb the emotions, they imitate the adults, they are uncannily sensitive to what is going on, even if they don't know how to describe it or to put it in words. Maybe that is why some parents prefer to ignore their children , maybe it is unsettling to see your self in a mirror, to hear you own words repeated, your troubles acted out in a game, to see that a little creature that doesn't know much can sense what you are trying to hide. Maybe the reason why few people remember their childhood is that they don't want to remember. They focus on a few events, look at them from distance, they collect memories, isolated, never connected, like some pieces of a jigsaw that holds a picture they don't want to see.

God, this is a fantastic novel!