Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

I love Margaret Atwood, but I actually haven't read a lot of her work. Cat's Eye is not a book I hear people talk about much; however, I found it to be, of her books I've read, the one that most clearly illuminates a feminist lens, and deals with the problematic issues of femininity and female relationships.

The story is about Elaine Risley, a painter who returns to Toronto in middle age for a showing of her work. Her weekend is cut with remembrances of her childhood, moving to the city with her strange (to others) family after early years of basically living in the wild (her father is an entomologist). Elaine has a brother, but has had no relationships with or experience of girls.

Through her three new friends, Carol, Grace and Cordelia, Elaine learns the ropes of femininity and the expectations of her sex through play, as little girls do. They do things like cutting out pictures of women and household items from the Eaton's catalogue and arranging them into scrapbooks, and playing with paper dolls of movie stars. But they also enforce a strange and arbitrary girl code that will be familiar to most girls reading, regardless of age; Cordelia makes up rules and standards that only she can see, but that Carol and Grace blindly enforce, and Elaine, longing to be loved and accepted, has to follow. She develops neuroses and bizarre fears, and is treated with increasing cruelty by her friends, but continues to return to them.

I can't describe much more of the plot because I feel like I can never do it justice. Atwood creates a very, very real girl world long before Mean Girls but similar in scope; an insulated world where no matter how bad things get, the worst thing would be to be cast out. The way Risley's half-remembered childhood influences her construction of herself, and her art, is heartbreaking; Atwood creates strong images and symbols that slowly begin to weave themselves through every aspect of the painter's life. Supposedly this is Atwood's most autobiographical novel ever, and of course it is - this could be any woman's life. The only thing that sets most of us apart from Elaine is that we grow up into the girl world; we learn the rules a little sooner.

The setting of Toronto is seen with cynical eyes. Post-war there is nothing going on; characters are constantly remarking on the lack of interest they have in the place. In the present day (the late 1980s) story, Elaine wanders around downtown and retraces her old steps, but the city itself still seems dreary and stale. The main character's relationship to the city and the period of her life when she lived there is a strong element in the novel, but this book is not exactly a tourist brochure for Toronto.

This is a story about memory and the construction of self; about women and their relationships to each other; and about loss. It was incredibly moving, but mostly just real - I think that for me, that is Atwood's greatest strength: her books are real talk.

I give this one five CN Towers out of five:

The Incident Report by Martha Baillie

This is, hands down, the best book I have read for this project so far. Well, my favourite anyway, because can there really be an objective best book?

As a teenager and in my early twenties I worked my fair share of customer service, although probably not nearly as much as some of my peers. Retail has always been a particular hatred of mine, although food service is perhaps not much better. Hell is other people, as Sartre did so wisely note. But my most hated feature of those jobs was also kind of my favourite - the ridiculous customers and their stories.

At one convenience store job we kept a notebook under the counter, and we would write the funny or strange things that happened. Humour makes most things bearable. The Incident Report starts out much like that notebook. The protagonist works in a library, and the format of the novel is a series of incident reports - stark, emotionless, detailed tellings of things that happen. For the first little while it is flat out hilarious, in a distressingly sad way; in the face of the weird forms of humanity that flock to free public spaces, it is hard to know whether to laugh or shake one's head. We don't know what our protagonist, 35-year-old Miriam, does. She just tells us what happened.

I would have imagined a book like this to be uninteresting, but the lack of emotion does not stop the writing from being poetic and clever, and it challenges the reader to imagine desires and feelings for Miriam, to learn who she is by the way she describes things, and what she does. Baillie tricks us into thinking we are simply reading a list of things that happened, and that we are not invested - and then pulls the rug right out from under us in big, disarming moments of pure emotion. It is tense the whole way through; I had a very strong impression of Miriam doing her best to hold back the ever-present chaos of her life and the life of the library.

This is a story about stories, but for being set in a library it has little to do with books. There are many great allusions throughout, notably to Hansel and Gretel (which I almost missed because I'm not great at allusions). There are seemingly unrelated bits and pieces from the childhoods of Miriam's coworkers. Very few of the reports take more than a page.

The novel is set at the Allan Gardens branch of the Toronto Public Library, where I have not been (Danforth/Coxwell what what!) but now kind of want to visit. Toronto plays a very small part in the story, as most of the action takes place in the library. It still retains a very local flavour, however.

This is a beautifully written, smartly crafted and thoroughly engaging book. I loved it so much, and cried unabashedly on the streetcar (you'll know which part). I can't recommend it highly enough, and I will most definitely be reading more of Baillie's work in the future.

Five out of five CN Towers

Ghosted by Shaugnessy Bishop-Stall

My mother can usually tell when she's reading an author's first novel, because "they try to put everything they know into it". When I got to the end of Ghosted, I knew it was a first novel without having to flip to the "About the Author" blurb. There is a lot going on in this book.

The story follows a guy named Mason, who has been dicking around for five years and getting in varying amounts of trouble. We meet him in his new apartment on Spadina, secured for him by his friend Chaz - a small time gangster and potentially the most likeable character in the book. Mason has a cocaine problem, a booze problem, and a gambling problem; he spends the first half of the book basically handing over money to Chaz, who is not only his landlord, but also his dealer and poker buddy.

Eventually, through his job selling hotdogs (something Chaz also, unsurprisingly, set him up with), Mason hits on a better scheme: ghostwriting suicide notes. Sounds like the set up for a whimsical, if slightly dark, tale of redemption, right?

Yeah, no. This book is definitely funny at times, but mostly it is depressing and scary. I can't say much else about the plot because there are quite a few surprises (well, I was surprised) but I will lay this out right now in case you are thinking of reading it, because I wish I had known in advance: there is a scene of child rape that is graphically written. You need to know it happens, but you can skip the actual paragraph without missing anything salient.

This is a story about empathy and redemption. There is a lot to take away from it. I think that a couple of the characters and situations were a bit superfluous and could have been saved for another book, and I think Mason dicks around for too long in the beginning. That said, Bishop-Stall is definitely a very gifted writer who has a keen understanding of some nitty-gritty shit that most people don't get to. I was never bored reading it. But for a book that drags you down so hard, there needed to be less of it.

There's definitely some cool Toronto scenery, especially around College and Spadina. Someone kills themselves on the subway tracks, and someone else gets hit by a streetcar. Fun stuff.

I will read Bishop-Stall's second novel and like it even more, I'm sure. This one gets three CN Towers out of five.

The Scott Pilgrim Series by Bryan Lee O'Malley: Vol. 1

Confession time: I saw the movie before reading any of the graphic novels, which I realize makes me a horrible person, and I apologize.

Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

This (very brief) volume introduces us to the main players: Scott and his very young girlfriend Knives, his band, his roommate Wallace, his sister, and the intriguing love interest, Ramona Flowers.

The plot is basically this: Scott, who is in his early 20s, is (rather chastely) dating a high schooler (Knives). They spend most of the book hanging out and going to thrift stores. Scott seems to enjoy listening to Knives chatter on about the high school drama in her life. Can I just say: I never want to date someone in high school. Besides the obvious creep factor (and it's worse for me than for Scott Pilgrim - I'm 27), I just am so glad that drama-filled part of my life is over! The only thing worse than high school drama is hearing about someone else's high school drama.

Anyway, Ramona Flowers, whom Scott has not met, starts appearing in his dreams. Then he meets her for real. They start hanging out/dating, and Scott has to not be an asshole and break it off with Knives - oh and Ramona has a bunch of evil exes that Scott has to fight. What? Yeah, it's a comic book.

I liked it. I thought Scott was a slimy douchebag and am still confused as to whether we're supposed to sympathize with him. The other characters are cool though, and I like the attention to detail in their clothes and hair. And Toronto is featured prominently and surprisingly accurately in the background. Some places we've seen so far include the stairs to Casa Loma and the Pizza Pizza at Bloor and Bathurst. Cool cool.

Four CN Towers out of five

My review of Volume 2 coming soon...