Cat's Eye- Margaret Atwood

Should have been edited more; and I'd like to know if it's autobiographical or not. It feels more like a novel written for an exorcism than anything else. It could have done with a lot of condensing; I didn't enjoy the last hundred or so pages. I got irritated because Elaine quickly martyrs herself to her childhood, and consequently seems to exile herself from the rest of the world. Even her relationships with men aren't properly close; it's as if she's always shrouded, like there's permanently a wall there between her and other people.

There is no laughter, on her part, in the book, and she seems to disdain those that do. This is a common theme in Atwood's work; the heroine never laughs, or is never caught laughing properly, never properly happy deep down. People around her are allowed to be content, her teacher, Mrs Finestein, but not her. Not that laughing and happiness are the same, but that the absence of both, or rather, their presence as a facade in her books always make laughter and happiness seem fake and contrived in those who exhibit them, or at least underpinned by a major tragedy.

Conclusion: Margaret Atwood needs to display some sort of happiness, not just round the peripheries. Noone lives an entire life of wallowing and abject self-pity. But her Klein Bottles are good.