Looking Into the Cat's Eye: Email No. 1

Cat's Eye Nebula

Raccoon,

I am in section three of Cat's Eye and here is what I have gathered about the story and characters so far.

Elaine Risley is a woman who is troubled by her past. The novel is told through a first person narrator with many flashbacks, so the reader is able to re witness some crucial and some not-so crucial memories. Elaine's mind is constantly bombarded with moments from the past, especially of her family and her best friend/greatest enemy Cordelia. At first, it appears that Cordelia and Elaine had a nice, childhood friendship. However, once Elaine enters Toronto she has mixed feelings about encountering Cordelia. She wants to talk to her, ignore her, she even pictures her in an iron lung, unconscious. It is apparent in the first chapter that Cordelia has had a lasting and profound effect on Elaine and, from what I've gathered, Elaine's artwork.

The flashbacks so far are about Elaine's childhood. They especially focus on her family life and how nomadic they were. She traveled a lot and never really had any close girl friends. It was always Elaine and her brother playing games that young boys would play. In a paragraph, she reveals how much she desired to have a girl friend and how she wanted to be normal. She gets that wish. Finally, her forest-entomologist father finds a stationary job, and the family settles down in Toronto. However, Elaine reveals, "In my dreams of this city I am always lost." Entering Toronto has dusted off the album of her past and her mind is flooded with memories, both good and bad.

What I love most about this novel is Atwood's use of language and how accurately and beautifully she describes things that I would have a hard time putting into words. One of my favorite lines is, " It's evening, one of those gray watercolor washes, like liquid dust, the city comes up with in fall." Not to mention, I love all of the art terminology! Atwood's style is detailed, flowing, tangential, and entertaining. I enjoy reading this story. However, I feel as if I haven't reached the meat of the plot just yet. I realize that Atwood is foreshadowing Elaine's relationships through her flashbacks. But for now, I don't know what's going to happen.

In my research prior to getting this novel, I found that the story revolves around female relationships, the forming of one's self-identity, and the concept of time and the past. Elaine in the opening chapter says, "But I began to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, something that, something nothing. Nothing goes away." From reading the first 50-60 pages, I see this idea illustrated through Atwood's language. She is exploring multiple layers of Elaine's life. Certain memories and emotions remain on the surface, while others sink but are not quite lost to the abyss. This is a complicated novel, and I am only beginning to explore it.