I just finished reading Cat's Eye and, like every other Atwood novel I've read, I loved it! My short summary of the book, for anyone that hasn't read it, is that it is about a woman, Elaine, who returns to her hometown for a retrospective showing of her paintings and while she is there she goes through an internal retrospective of her life, particularly her childhood. One of the major themes in the book is the types of relationships that women have with each other, and what makes the relationships take those forms.

I felt that this books was very similar to The Robber Bride with respect to that. This was another book where an adult woman looks back on her relationship with women and with her own coming to terms with what it means to be a woman. And again, there is a focus on one particular "evil" woman.

In a discussion I was reading, it was mentioned that in one of the short stories by Atwood there is a questioning of who other people really are, and who they think you are. Those questions, and also the question of whether other people might remember events differently than you do are also highly prominent in Cat's Eye, and in fact, in The Robber Bride as well. With both of these books, we get a one-sided view of events. But in Cat's Eye, more so than in The Robber Bride, there is some acceptance of the fact that perhaps Cordelia has her own side of the story. And that she certainly has different memories of what happened. The characters all seem to remember only what it is that they can live with remembering.

Personally, I found the plot very gripping. Reading about Elaine's childhood, I wanted to be able to help her. I felt that while the events may have been more extreme than what every girl goes through, it captured the feel of the experiences of many girls during their younger school years. It was a very emotional book to read, I found.

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