The Edible Woman

This probably isn't the attitude that I was supposed to have, but I found this incredibly, surreally funny. It's amazingly confident for a first novel, and that really helped to up my enjoyment level of the book, even though it's not the most accomplished of her novels. The metaphors which Atwood uses are very, very layered and dense, and don't always work exactly - it's starts to waver and fall apart towards the end of the novel - but for the most part, they're very satisfying to pick your way through.

The minor characters are mostly interesting in the glimpses and snatches which we get to see of them - Ainsley, Fisch, the Office Virgins, Clara - though Duncan irritated me. His character was overly obvious, unrealistic, a literary conceit and not a person.

The examinations of femininity, what it means and especially what it meant in the late 60s are really fascinating. Some of it still holds true today; some of the attitudes expressed horrify me more than a little; some of the attitudes horrify me so much that I can only laugh (Ainsley's serious declaration that her child will grow up to be homosexual if it doesn't have a father figure). It's an interesting novel in that it's so universal as a record of female experience, while at the same time being so distinctly tied to a certain era. Not Atwood's best work, all in all, but still entertaining and engaging.

Cat's Eye

It's been a while since I've read anything by Atwood, but slipping back into her style of writing was pleasurable and comfortable, as much as I found that some of the themes and subjects she touched upon in this were quite disturbing to me. It's less a story than it is a series of memories - of other people, of growing up, of bullying, of being bullied, of loss and of change. There were some parts of it that I reread over and over as I was working my way through the book, especially those parts of the book which dealt with Cordelia; she is in many ways as much the main character in the book as Elaine is, although we never get to see her past a certain point in her life, and we never get to hear her thoughts or see what she thought of that whole period. Atwood handled that very well, I though - showing us one very important character entirely through memory, and pointing to the ways in which the memories of this person could be so very important, even if they mightn't been true reflections of that person at all. It's all told in beautiful prose, with a deft ability at moving backwards and forwards through time and space, a wonderful evocation of society in Canada in the 40s and 50s, and a wryly dark sense of humour. ( )