narrativeleaves 's review for:

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

5.0

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This is probably the most devastating book I have read in years. I literally had to put it down at times and take refuge in some YA book in order not to descend into my long repressed childhood darker days and get lost over there in some sort of hibernation process. That having been said, this is also one of the most brilliant books I have read in my life. It comes closer to human psychology than Never Let Me Go, and it is so much more hurtful.

Because everything in Cat’s Eye rings true. It is exactly like it was in my primary school. Girl politics are a dirty business. It is true there are wild and tame kids. It is true that the wild ones have bad days and good days, and one can do nothing but to hope tomorrow it’s a good day. Because on the good days, the wild girl smiles at you and you feel special, you feel that you absolutely have to share all your secrets so she will be friends with you forever. And somehow, those glimpses of light carry the bullied through all the other days in which the alpha girl feels a little less entertained and abuses her unassertive but good-willing friends with a cruelty that only kids can truly display.

The alpha girls I met during my lifetime have never tried to hurt me physically or force me to do things that would probably cause my death – which happens in Cat’s Eye. But they did make me feel unworthy, like an abnormal person, clumsy and like I’m only acting like I am someone because in fact I’m not even entitled to being it. And your teen years do indeed save you, because it’s the first chance you get at defining yourself, doing what it takes to exist beyond the image bullies create of you. When I turned thirteen, I started wearing black, little by little, because a part of me believed that would create a distance between me and the stereotype of me as a goodie girl that had made me an easy target up until then.

However, the reason this book is so devastating is not because it reminds me of my own past, but because things like these are still happening somehow somewhere, at this very instant. Kids are cruel, not only girls, but also boys. It’s only that girls usually have to resort to non-physical forms of imposing their supremacy of power in their relation with other girls, which makes them more creative and therefore crueler.

There is so much to be said about this book. And yet I am at a loss for words. Just read it. It’s such an honest book it breaks you to pieces. I guess I would also like to ask Cordelia ‘why’. But I know why. So does Elaine. I think we just wish we didn’t.