I know, this book is over 50 years old, and it's not fair to judge its sensibilities by today's standards. But (of course) I felt like this book's intended strength was to just be about a woman's life, and that just being about a female artist and not a man was going to be enough of a feat to make it great. Reading it in 2016, I found it beautifully written, but deeply unsatisfying.
Like other readers, Elaine exasperated me. I wished her deeply unusual childhood had produced some effect on her other than developing a mild emotional detachment disorder. I wished her cat's eye marble, which shows up in her possession and in her art, had some meaning in her life. I wished she had used her negative experiences for herself somehow. I wished she had fought back a bit, maybe found some sort of internal strength or character to secretly cherish (which should have been symbolized by the cat's eye, clearly, but it turns out that was a red herring). I wished she had at least become wise over the years. But in the end, this character gave the reader and herself absolutely nothing.
I wished that after such a shocking and horrifying beginning, her relationship with Cordelia had had an ending that was not bland and anticlimactic. I kept waiting for Cordelia to come back, in some form, to give her early cruelty some sort of meaning. Or, better, to answer the main question of the book, which Elaine herself states: "I need to ask her why." Elaine also says, "We are like the twins in old fables, each of whom has been given half a key." Except, in the old fables, obviously the twins would eventually reunite, join their keys, and open the lock. This novel, by comparison, reads like half a book. Elaine has half a story. She is half a person, but she is the physical half, not the half we really want to know about.
Elaine does sort of transform, but only by growing older, not by any will of her own. Like other readers, I sometimes find a passive and unlikable main character to be too large an obstacle to surmount. I think I am just getting too old to be patient with voiceless main characters. Or maybe it's too much the 21st Century for me to find painting cruelly realistic renderings of disabled housewives to be a provocative or revolutionary expression of one's voice? It could be that this novel is too old for me, in a way.
I can't recommend this book. Especially if, like me, you find it difficult to read the prose without hearing it in Atwood's own nasal and self-satisfied Gothic Ontario drawl.
Like other readers, Elaine exasperated me. I wished her deeply unusual childhood had produced some effect on her other than developing a mild emotional detachment disorder. I wished her cat's eye marble, which shows up in her possession and in her art, had some meaning in her life. I wished she had used her negative experiences for herself somehow. I wished she had fought back a bit, maybe found some sort of internal strength or character to secretly cherish (which should have been symbolized by the cat's eye, clearly, but it turns out that was a red herring). I wished she had at least become wise over the years. But in the end, this character gave the reader and herself absolutely nothing.
I wished that after such a shocking and horrifying beginning, her relationship with Cordelia had had an ending that was not bland and anticlimactic. I kept waiting for Cordelia to come back, in some form, to give her early cruelty some sort of meaning. Or, better, to answer the main question of the book, which Elaine herself states: "I need to ask her why." Elaine also says, "We are like the twins in old fables, each of whom has been given half a key." Except, in the old fables, obviously the twins would eventually reunite, join their keys, and open the lock. This novel, by comparison, reads like half a book. Elaine has half a story. She is half a person, but she is the physical half, not the half we really want to know about.
Elaine does sort of transform, but only by growing older, not by any will of her own. Like other readers, I sometimes find a passive and unlikable main character to be too large an obstacle to surmount. I think I am just getting too old to be patient with voiceless main characters. Or maybe it's too much the 21st Century for me to find painting cruelly realistic renderings of disabled housewives to be a provocative or revolutionary expression of one's voice? It could be that this novel is too old for me, in a way.
I can't recommend this book. Especially if, like me, you find it difficult to read the prose without hearing it in Atwood's own nasal and self-satisfied Gothic Ontario drawl.
