Best/Worst Books of the year...

I admit that the book in the ‘Worst Book’ section certainly wasn’t the worst book that I had read this year, but I have chosen two books by the same author to show how one book was a dream to read, and the other rather more challenging.

Best Book – Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood, 1988

I read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) at the start of 2010, and greeted the opportunity to study another of this author’s work with relish. Cat’s Eye was part of my ‘Coming of Age in America’ module which I undertook this year, and deals perhaps not so much with the main character’s, Elaine’s, maturity into an adult, but on how one’s childhood can profoundly influence and shape one’s adult life. it is told mainly through flashback on the key events in Elaine’s life, from befriending a trio of girls, developing her artistic career, marrying, having children, divorcing, up until the moment of confrontation with her past.

For Elaine was not only friends with these three girls, but bullied by them. The leader of the pack is Cordelia, whose love/hate relationship with Elaine is central to the plot. For example, it is Cordelia’s decision which leaves our antagonist at the bottom of a ravine in the middle of winter, yet also inspires her to become an artist.

Elaine’s art allows for the projection for her true feelings for the people whom she has met throughout her life, even if she cannot remember exactly why she feels this way. The theme of repressed emotion is thus explored by Atwood, which language is not capable of expressing, and can only be channelled through her character’s talent for painting. Atwood cleverly hints at Elaine’s true feelings by naming her chapters after the names of Elaine’s paintings.

To be brief, Atwood’s prose in this novel is some of the finest I have read – it is so simple to read, yet entirely engrossing. It is to be commended, as whilst I re-read parts many times to find the obvious golden sentence which must have subliminally drawn me into her work, I simply could not find it. The simplicity of her writing, combined with the intriguing and personal story, cannot help but engross the reader. The use of flashback, with the middle aged Elaine confronting her teenage self, means this text is accessible to a reader of any age.

I found this book interesting for it dealt with an individual situation, yet one which many people have experienced, that of bullying. It also deals with how feelings are expressed in art, and it was a revelation to experience a writer who explains to those ignorant of the fact that art isn’t just pretty pictures, but hides traumatic experiences that NEED to be let out.

Most not enjoyable as I thought it would be book, Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood, 2003

Please don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad book by any stretch. But after reading two previous fantastic novels by Atwood, I was expecting brilliance, but got a text with interesting ideas, yet not as engrossing a story.

Oryx and Crake is a post-apocalyptic novel, set in the near (ish) future, where, at the start of the novel at least, an unknown catastrophe has destroyed human life as we know it. It is here that this novel is interesting – it is far enough into the future that it is not human life as we know it. People have been separated into two classes, those who live in compounds, the privileged, and those in the ‘pleeblands’, which conjures up images of Orwell’s description of the ‘Proles’ in 1984. The antagonist, Snowman, has survived the catastrophe, and lives near an almost superhuman group of people, whose true story is not told until the end of the novel.

And this is this novel’s shining feature. Also told in flashback, it explores the events leading up to the catastrophe. I found myself only wanting to read on with a kind of morbid fascination for what event could have destroyed the human race so efficiently, who are portrayed so disgustingly, rampant with underage porn sites etc, that at the end I wanted them to die off, and the genetically mutated superhumans seem much superior.

Maybe this is Atwood’s point – there is certainly a critique of how we are being desensitised to pain and trauma in the websites which Snowman and his friends look at as teenagers. But it was also these passages that felt most awkwardly written. I find it almost embarrassing when authors say such things as ‘DVD player’ or ‘cellphone’ in order to try to root their text in the modern age, as if struggling to acknowledge that these things exist, and forcing the reader to believe that she is in tocuh. Snowman and his friend send emails to each other – sure, this is possible, yet this terminology seems very outdated in the age of Facebook and Twitter. It seems almost irrational that Atwood could predict the advancement of disgusting websites and genetically altering science, yet not the power of sites such as Myspace or Facebook, which had definitely begun to be influential by the time this novel was written. Also, essential products such as food are now in short supply, and so Atwood feels it is important to point out every time ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ butter, beer, cheese, whatever, is consumed by her characters in the compounds. However, the repetition of this idea or privileged authenticity can become a little dull, perhaps ‘done to death’ is the correct expression.

Atwood again explores the issues of childhood strains on the adult self, yet I’m not sure if it’s the anti-hero of Snowman or the more personal first person perspective of Elaine which makes Cat’s Eye the more engrossing story. Oryx and Crake felt more like a niggling thorn in my side to fill the gaps in the plot, like a Da Vinci Code ‘let’s get this over with’, rather than in Cat’s Eye, where I urgently needed to discover exactly what it was that has created Elaine, a much more rounded, realistic, and embraceable character.