Rating: 
Summary: One of Atwood's best books
Review: I've read all of Margaret Atwood's books, except Alias Grace. I read my sister's copy of Cat's Eye when if first came out and remember thinking: "hmmm, kind of a rehash of themes from earlier books," specifically Lady Oracle, in which menacing ravines also figure. It seemed a so-so, traditional effort after the more obviously audacious Handmaid's Tale.Recently, however, after 9/11, i went through a phase where I couldn't read, couldn't find a book that could hold my attention, lead me into its world, make me care. Came upon Cat's Eye in a thrift store. Revelation: how much stronger and sure-stepped it seems to me the second time. Atwood's expert handling of the slow power shift between Elaine and Cordelia affected me more deeply this time, perhaps because I've lived longer now and have seen strong friends falter and others, once dismissed as "quiet," emerge as the real, fierce talents. Don't hesitate. Read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Relationships
Review: This was a wonderful read about the growing pains that most young women go through and the way that we learn to become functioning adults. I remember girls from my childhood that acted very much like Cordelia and Elaine. I think this would be a great book for girls in high school to read to give insight into their own world.
Rating: 
Summary: A Haunting Novel
Review: Other reviewers have used the word "haunting" to describe this novel, and I must agree. This book stayed with me long after I finished it, and compelled me to read even when I was too tired to do so. At first, I couldn't decide whether I liked it or not. Elaine, the protagonist, does not come across as a strong character; indeed, she is almost painfully introspective and introverted. Her inner life is rich, however, and her ruminations about her family and friends are quite perceptive. So I kept reading and allowed Elaine to reveal herself to me. As a girl, Elaine grows up in a family that is unusual, but loving and supportive of her. Her "friends" are another story. I don't think I've ever read anything that describes so well the cruelty that young girls are capable of. The social and psychological aspects of growing up are no better shown than here. However, this is the strongest part of the book. Elaine's adult life, colored as it was by her past, is not as richly portrayed, but she remains an interesting person. Her art is her catharsis, as personal and as difficult for an outsider to understand as is the artist herself. This book is an eerie coming-of-age tale, told with poetic beauty and sorrow.
Rating:
Summary: A rich and compelling book
Review: I enjoyed this book a lot. Although parts of it were quite disturbing, Atwood refrained from going too far. This book paints a chilling picture of how mean kids can be to each other -- and how childhood hurts can haunt adults -- all against an intricately woven tapestry of yesteryear Toronto. This was the 1st time I'd read Atwood -- but it won't be the last.
Rating:
Summary: painfully beautiful
Review: This book is so colorful! I don't so much like the last 150 pages or so as much as I like her girlhood accounts. Torturesome they are, but not out of the palette of human cruelty. I really identified with Elaine on a lot of things, and I am sure many of us knew a Cordelia or two who continue to haunt us.
Rating: 
Summary: First half good, second part really dull
Review: I enjoyed reading the first part of this part, about Elaine's childhood--and could very well relate to the cruely and power plays which do occur among young girls in our society. In fact, I found the chapters which returned to the present an interruption because they just seemed to ramble on. In the present, Elaine has returned to Toronto, her hometown, for an art show, and these chapters just go on and on as she wanders around town in a jogging suit--with her whining about her flab and middle age, checking out how the streets and ambiance has changed. One chapter could have sufficed. The second part was rather disjointed and monotonous. Here Elaine is a young adult, and again, the story switches back and forth between that time and the present. It seems like Atwood suddenly felt she was in a hurry to finish this up. We get no feeling as to what went wrong in her marriage, why they were "throwing things" and what really was going on. It seems that she suddenly remembers she has a brother, and needs to do something about him, so she kills him off. It seemed totally contrived. She does the same thing with her parents. She hasn't meantioned them for a few hundred pages, and all of a sudden, they die off too, in a few pages. Her marriage to her second husband, and birth of a second child is covered in half a page. We get no feel as to how she evolved into this whining, depressing creature who's now wandering the streets of Toronto, moaning about her friendship to Cordelia. Cordelia is another issue. Right at the beginning, it's hinted that there's something really exciting with this Cordelia issue, that some juicy issues are going to be uncovered. But after her initial torment, at age 9 or 10,there's nothing more to it. She becomes friends with her again in high school, Cordelia no longer has power over her. She runs into her once or twice after high school, and that's it. I was waiting for something more, why this obsession with her, but nothing. I gave this book 2 stars because I liked the first part about her childhood and some of her writing is very good, but all in all, a very depressing book that promises something but doesn't deliver. No plot, no "message" nothing to learn from it.
Rating:
Summary: Survivor's Guilt
Review: When push came to shove, Elaine shoved back at Cordelia the destructive projections that nearly klled her, and became the survivor of the headgame. Though they continually tussled over the next thirty-something years, out of each others' sight but earily never out of mind, Elaine again emerged the winner. I cheered for her each time she drew ahead, and glowed with approval as she leveled the playing field with her caution, compassion and forgiveness for Cordelia. What a friend she would have been to her tragically named counterpart, had Cordelia survived, and what grief Elaine bore at the realization that in some life battles there can be only one survivor. I myself am involved in religious education, and stumbled onto Atwood's book because of its frequent and affectionate mention in Sally Cunneen's book, In Search of Mary--the Woman and the Symbol (1996). Atwood shows that the idea of Mary as a saving mother figure is universally understood and embraced, especially so in the artistic world in which there are no limits to presentations or appellations of her. In Elaine's world, at the juncture when she rejects and is rejected by Grace's (another ironic name chice)family's reactionary style of Anglicanism, her enemy's enemy truly becomes her best friend, and so evolves her receptivity to Cathoic myth and symbol, Mary. Naturally Mary's antithesis is Mrs. Smeath; and I cheered for Elaine as she had her say through her art. I loved Elaine's wonderfully sensitive mother, and her quirky intellectual family, who without religion had acheived an inborn faith. I must confess I know nothing of marbles; so the title Cat's Eye spoke to me instead of an instictive, survivor's gift of night-sight, maybe even ancient Egptian astrologer's wisdom. In the cover picture, the robed figure is not simply holding the eye (truth), but seems in the act of placing it into our hands, our possession. Yes, Elaine had to realize the truth that she was not dysfunctional, only weak and naive, and like the elevated eye, needed to see the whole landscape of her life. What an excelent job Atwood did of illustrating a confused, criticized girl's capability for self-mutilation, a survivor's guilt becoming self-destructve. I would like Elaine to have shared more of her puberty experience and how it was handled in her family, and more about her first feelings of desire, as these were not mentioned. I agree, Amykrug, that ths is an anti-Yaya book, and was thinking that same thought as I read. Let every parent who reads this keep a cat's eye on their daughter and her friends! Lastly, I am impressed by the large number of reviews from far-off places like Malaysia, Argentina, I would like to have read more from the reader from Pakistan. (Please someone tell me what level A exams are).
Rating:
Summary: The real story of girlfriends
Review: Sort of an anti-"Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood", "Cat's Eye" is the sometimes brutal, sometimes comical, and always truthful story of the nature of female friendships. While Cordelia et al are a bit extreme in their cruelty, most women can pinpoint at least one comparable "friend" in their growing-up years. And unfortunately, those are the expreriences that most shape adulthood. Atwood again uses her unique blend of humor and emotion to craft a gripping novel. Except for some problems relating the adult Elaine to the child Elaine, the characters are real and engrossing. In addition to the surface story and its exploration of friendship, "Cat's Eye" provides an interesting commentary on feminism as both a movement and a lifestyle. One of my favorite Atwood novels - highly recommended for any fan of good fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding
Review: This book, as others have stated, is about the way that our childhood impacts the adult we become, and the terrible way girls can treat each other. I did find it hard to get in to at the beginning, but by the first 50 pages, I was captivated. Atwood has an amazing way with words; the book is poetic. The book doesn't have as much dialogue as I normally want from a book, because Atwood is most concerned with setting a scene and creating a mood. It is very internal novel, and it is not linear. Not an easy read, but well worth it. There are so many levels to this book. Every time I read it I see something different in it.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest book ever written!
Review: This multi-layered book about how childhood experiences impact on the rest of life's journey, tackles a subject rarely explored. This subject is how truly horrifying children's emotional cruelty to one another can be. Sure there have been lots of stories about English boys beating each other up, and inflicting nasty physical tortures on one another, but this book is a rarity because it tells of how little girls, as young as nine, inflict emotional torture on each other. There is much more to this book however. Cat's eye explores the whole life journey of a woman after these miserable childhood experiences, and her preoccupation throughout life with the "friend" who was the ringleader of these children's "reindeer games". None of what I have written so far describes how magnificent the prose and poetry of this book is. It explores many other topics such as art, marriage and old age. It is very much a novel that is primarily of interest to women which may be why it didn't win the Booker Prize. It's my favorite book in the world, except perhaps for the Robber Bride also by Atwood.
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