Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood [0]
AND CAT’S EYE
“SPARKLING … ATWOOD PRESENTS THE APPREHENSIONS OF A TEN-YEAR-OLD SO INTENSELY THAT THEY ALMOST SEEM TO BE THE READER’S OWN MEMORIES.… HER VISUAL SENSE IS ACUTE.… HER CAUSTIC DESCRIPTIONS OF THE ART WORLD, THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT, THE OLD BORING TORONTO, THE NEW ‘WORLD-CLASS’ TORONTO ARE FUNNY AND TO THE POINT.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“A DELIGHT … IT’S A PENSIVE MEDITATION ON LIFE’S RELENTLESS FORWARD MARCH INTO THE CONSOLATIONS OF MIDDLE AGE. IT’S ALSO A RICH MEMOIR WHICH RECAPTURES ATWOOD’S GIRLHOOD AND YOUTH IN TORONTO OF THE LATE 1940s AND THE 1950s—THOSE FRUMPY, BYGONE DAYS OF POLIO SCARES AND 5-CENT ICE CREAM CONES.… AN ABSORBING STORY.”
—Boston Herald
“ATWOOD’S CHARACTERS ARE RIGHT ON.… HER PROSE HAS CLARITY AND ECONOMY, AND HER ENDINGS ARE WHAT ENDINGS SHOULD BE—THEY READ LIKE GOOD POETRY.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“ATWOOD [IS] WRITING AT THE TOP OF HER ENERGY.… CATS EYE IS SO FINE THAT SIMPLY TO OBSERVE HOW IT WORKS IS THE BEST PRAISE.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A DARING PIECE OF WORK … WITH EACH SMALL SCENE OFFERING TRADITIONAL REMINISCENCE, ATWOOD UPS THE AESTHETIC ANTE, PLACING THE MUNDANE IN A SPECULATIVE FRAMEWORK WHERE NOTHING CAN BE TAKEN FOR WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE, IN ART OR LIFE, IN PAST OR PRESENT, IN TIME OR OUT OF IT.”
—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
“STUNNING … ATWOOD CONCEIVES ELAINE WITH A POET’S TRANSFORMING FIRE; AND DELIVERS HER TO US THAT WAY, A FLAME INSIDE AN ICICLE.”
—Los Angeles Times
“CAT’S EYE IS A STORY ABOUT THE POWER OF SECRETS.… ATWOOD HAS ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING RARE AND VALUABLE.… HER DEPICTIONS OF LITTLE-GIRL LIFE (NOT JUST THE DETAILS, BUT THE MOOD AND THE FEELINGS) ARE AMONG THE MOST POWERFUL I CAN REMEMBER.”
—Mademoiselle
“A RICH NOVEL … THE FRESHNESS OF ATWOOD’S IMAGES SHOULD EARN SUSTAINED APPLAUSE FROM READERS.”
—Newsday
BY MARGARET ATWOOD
Fiction
The Edible Woman
Surfacing
Lady Oracle
Life Before Man
Bodily Harm
The Handmaid’s Tale
Cat’s Eye
The Robber Bride
Alias Grace
The Blind Assassin
Oryx and Crake
Short Fiction
Dancing Girls
Bluebeard’s Egg
Wilderness Tips
Good Bones and Simple Murders
Poetry
The Circle Game
The Animals in That Country
The Journals of Susanna Moodie
Procedures for Underground
Power Politics
You Are Happy
Two-Headed Poems
Selected Poems
True Stories
Interlunar
Selected Poems II
Morning in the Burned House
Nonfiction
Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
Second Words
Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
For Children
Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, February 1998
Copyright © 1988 by O. W. Toad, Ltd.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday in 1989. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
ANCHOR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Lines from Memory of Fire: Genesis by Eduardo Galeano (Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York: 1985) are reproduced by permission. Lines from the song “Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer,” by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson © 1943 (renewed 1970) Robbins Music Corp. All rights of Robbins Music Corp. assigned to SBK Catalogue Partnership. All rights controlled and administered by SBK Robbins Catalog, Inc. International copyright secured. Made in U.S.A. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this book
as follows:
Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, 1939–
Cat’s eye / Margaret Atwood.—1st ed.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PR9199.3.A8C38 1989 88–24345
813′.54—dc19
eISBN: 978-0-307-79796-4
www.anchorbooks.com
v3.1
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Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
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