Krishna
Like The Edible Woman, which we have reviewed earlier, this is one of Margaret Attwood’s so-so novels, nowhere near the level of The Blind Assassin or Alias Grace
Yes, I do know that it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize but that does not change my opinion even a bit.
It is all relative. Even the not-the-best book of Margaret can charm with its descriptions and the deft turn of phrase and the sheer evocative power of the descriptions and so this book is definitely rewarding, but in parts. In the absence of a good plot and in the meandering story line for almost the second half of the whole book, it leaves you disappointed, especially after you have read some of her books that are far better.
Cordelia and the narrator Elaine were childhood friends. The narrator has come back to Toronto after many years. She wonders how Cordelia will look after all these years. We know that this is the starting point from which we slowly widen the circle to understand the full story. This is the charming mode that Margaret Attwood employs in many of the stories.
We learn that the narrator has gone back to Toronto – she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia now – for an exhibition of her artwork. She walks around Toronto going through Queen Street and King Street, watching her own poster on the walls.
She remembers her nomadic life, moving from place to place, living in tents and cheap motels with her parents, an elder sister and a brother in the group. They take up a dilapidated house in Toronto and have to rough it up while they slowly improve it.
She makes friends with a girl called Carol in school. And then a girl called Grace. They are far higher in social strata than her. When she goes away on one of her wandering trips with her parents and comes back, she meets a new girl, Cordelia.
Grace introduces her to the pleasures of the Church. Her parents let her go, but warn her not to believe in everything she hears.
The girls – Grace, Cordelia and Carol seem to take pleasure in tormenting the narrator constantly. She gets sick and even skips class to avoid them but cannot seem to resist the social pressures from them. She reminisces many years later and the comparisons of how the city has changed are amusing, especially if you know the city well as it is today.
She now learns that Grace’s family despises her and her family for their heathen behaviour and resentment swells up in her. And shame and hatred with it. When the girls make her fall into an icy pond by throwing her cap on thin ice and make her go get it, she almost drowns. Somehow she climbs out and from then on, finds the courage to defy the girls and get a lot of other friends. They all move away, but Cordelia, who could not cut it in another private school comes back to her school and then tries to befriend her. Now, she has the upper hand over Cordelia and surprises herself by being mean to Cordelia.
When Cordelia moves again she loses touch but Cordelia is now desperate to call her the best friend that she, Cordelia, has ever had and wants to stay in touch. She also has failed and is at the point of giving up her studies altogether.
Now Elaine joins an art class and has an affair with the Hungarian teacher called Hrbik even though she knows he is exploiting her and even though she knows he is having a simultaneous affair with another student called Susie. And both these girls are less than half his age, and he has stories of being a war survivor and having left his family there when he had to flee to Canada.
Sue calls her desperately one day and Elaine finds her lying in a pool of blood. It was a self abortion attempt. There were no way for women to get condom or other birth control aids in those days.
That is abandoned abruptly. She also has an affair in parallel with Jon – who was a fellow art student and who is superciliously whiny in a different way and sneering about her art and nonchalant about the sex – and then she gets rid of Hriblik when he gets too whiny and possessive. He moves away to US where he thinks he has better prospects. She finds herself pregnant with Sarah and, incredibly, Jon marries her and they live together. They fight constantly. In the meanwhile, she becomes a moderately known painter in Toronto. When she one day reaches such a low that she tries to slash her wrists, she knows she has to leave.
Meanwhile Cordelia slides lower and lower and ends up in an Asylum. Elaine refuses to kidnap her out as Cordelia wants and forever feels guilty. Go figure.
She moves to Vancouver, divorces John, meets and marries Ben and has another child with him. She is settled in Vancouver.
But when she is back at Toronto for a show, she has no compunctions about jumping into bed with Jon. She ‘does not consider it a betrayal of Ben but just a kind of goodbye to Jon’. She also ‘knows that she will not do this again with Jon’. Wait, what? Even in the artistic universe of Elaine (and Attwood) does any of this make sense?
It gets even more bizarre (if that is possible). She keeps waiting for Cordelia to her show and it never happens. She visits the bridge and imagines Cordelia. She sees her childhood photos with mom (who is sick and is alone since her dad passed away and her brother Stephen, a particle physicist was killed in a hostage situation somewhere in the world).
No end; no conclusion; no obvious purpose and it leaves you wondering what was the point of the story. Even the title is not clear. The cat’s eye is a marble she has and it is not really clear on what it alludes to. She had it all her childhood but it does not do anything; does not represent anything; is not involved in anything – I do not think it is an allusion to the marble collection her brother had and buried somewhere that was never found by her, but even if it is, so what?
4/10
– – Krishna