MixedPittsburgh Post-GazetteI’m no Atwood completionist, but her novels represent a vital force in my development as a woman. So when, at 100 pages in, I was simply bored by her memoir, I felt confused. How could the memoir of one of the most imaginative, provocative novelists of the 20th century be a simple record of facts and events (and occasional horoscopes), and say very little about how these events affected her and her writing? ... Atwood states that when initially asked about this book on tour, she responded that she had simply channeled the semi-universal cruelty of pre-adolescent girls. But in her memoir, she acknowledges that most of the events in Cat’s Eye are her own. It seems to me that the entire memoir, perhaps her entire oeuvre, is the result of this original betrayal ... Read her fiction, read her memoir, get bored (also enjoy the Canlit, aka Canadian Literature, gossip) and then look back at yourself: what does Atwood’s fiction say about me, about the world in which I became a person? For all my disappointment, the memoir is highly quotable.
