** spoiler alert ** This was one of Margaret Atwood's finest works to date. Cat's Eye is the tale of Elaine Risley, an accomplished artist who returns in middle age to her home town of Toronto for a retrospective of her life's work.

Rather than relishing her moment of glory, she dreads it, as her return brings back some unwanted memories of the torment she suffered at the hands of adolescent girls who professed to be her best friends.

Atwood's genius lies in the way she entwines her protagonist's past and present lives. Elaine is haunted by persistent reminders of the cruelty visited upon her by three ten-year-old girls, who she sees in various forms all over Toronto. Elaine's memories of her childhood seem even more vivid than her life as an adult, and she struggles throughout the book to escape their withering effects upon her confidence and her mental health.

I know of no other author who has better captured the misery of a shy child, desperate for the approval of her girl friends, and who does not yet know that she deserves far better treatment from her peers.

Months after finishing the book I read that Ms Atwood was constantly uprooted as a young child due to her father's profession, as was Elaine in her early years. Substitute writer for artist, and you have an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical work. Writing Cat's Eye may have been a catharthis for this author, who possibly succeeded in exorcising her demons, as Elaine finally exorcised Cordellia, the cruelest member of her group.