i swear toronto is a lovely and blissful place! tralala! poutine! trees! comic artists! happy toronto town, i swear. :) -- i'm sure by the time you get done reading this book, you'll understand why i did that. :)

ha! well, i just finished another book set in toronto that didn't do any favors for your treatment of immigrant populations, but i'm not holding it against y'all...

poutine solves all problems.

karen wrote: "ha! well, i just finished another book set in toronto that didn't do any favors for your treatment of immigrant populations, but i'm not holding it against y'all...

poutine solves all problems."

jeez, really? what novel was that? immigrant populations is one of the things we do well! goes to show that novelists are genius at making stuff up (and giving one excuses to eat poutine. :)

More: A Novel. it is about, among other things, the semblance of equality, but the lingering racism and resentment. but honestly, it never once mentions comic artists, so you know it is not a fair and balanced book.

haaaa how does she describe it in one late chapter, Toronto hanging smoldering in the air like a modern-day personal Sodom and Gomorrah "at which I dare not look back"? Ah, Atwood.

Moira wrote: "haaaa how does she describe it in one late chapter, Toronto hanging smoldering in the air like a modern-day personal Sodom and Gomorrah "at which I dare not look back"? Ah, Atwood."

argh. full disclosure: i really do not like margaret atwood. my canadian author margaret is margaret laurence. margaret atwood lives in toronto now, so i guess it's not that bad after all. :P

p.s. now karen knows why i was so reasonable about her potential not-love of the hawkline monster. also, i avoid books like this more book. i read too many that were almost the same as colour purple and i was exhausted by all the incest that inevitable seemed to be included. the last i read was cereus blooms at night, by shani mootoo, i think.

Wait, you haven't read this before? I love this book!

i know! how have i never read it!? i have picked it up many times and always put it down in favor of something else, but so far i love it like crazy. seriously - like craaaazy.

greg is getting me the brautigan from the library.

Glad to hear you're enjoying it... it's one of my all time favorites. :)

it is definitely my favorite atwood so far. but i am only at the very beginning.

For a good and comprehensive look at literature about Toronto, check out Amy Lavender Harris's recent book, Imagining Toronto. It's both smart and a lot of fun. Plus, I edited it, so you'll admire the comma placement.

i do like your commas, i was just saying the other day....

karen wrote: "i know! how have i never read it!? i have picked it up many times and always put it down in favor of something else, but so far i love it like crazy. seriously - like craaaazy.

greg is getting me..."

I didn't like it when I first read it, in high school, probably because I hated the teacher who recommended it. I read it again in college and loved it. You'll see some of the themes again in Year of the Flood, should you ever get to it.

It's that good?

i'm not sure if it will be the same for you. it was very ....familiar. another protagonist, like notes from underground, i see too much of myself in. terrifying.

this is perpetually on my stack of books to read if i can just manage to put down the sci-fi and back away slowly. maybe i should do that.

p.s. i found a harington at borders for 90 percent off! it was the cherry pit, but still!

Damn, what a sell.

I fucking love Atwood, though...

I'm starting this tomorrow, by the way. It was in the garage ready to be sold in the hopes that I would later library rent it, but you just talked me out of that. THANKS!

good call! used book stores are overflowing with this book so you wouldn't have gotten anything anyway. maybe a quarter.

Actually, I now realize what I have is a triple-decker: Life Before Man, Surfacing, and the Handmaid's Tale...Cat's Eye is still going to have to be a library hopeful.

Oh man, this is the most perfectly true one-sentence review of all time.

I read this last summer, I think mid-May, and I love it! Unfortunately, people call me gay after liking Atwood's works. Heck, this book is for everyone. Anyway, I don't like to remind myself.

i have read three more of her books and liked them fine, but nothing like this. this was just great. looooved. should have read it ages ago.

Wow, good for you. Have you read The Blind Assassin? I've been eyeing that book for months already but never tried to touch it. I also love Alias Grace!

Cat's Eye! Cat's Eye! Personally, I prefer The Robber Bride but this is a close second, very very close, almost like twins. :-)

I haven't read this Atwood yet, but I love her stuff, so this will probably be a five star for me. She just hurts me in all the right places, I think.

i had read The Edible Woman, The Handmaid's Tale, and Oryx and Crake. but i own robber bride, so i will definitely remember that...

i can't even explain how much i loved this book

This book is not just set in Toronto, and it's not really even about Toronto -- it is more and deeper than that. Toronto is actually a character in this novel. This brilliant, brilliant novel.

Having recently re-read it (sliding by the High Park subway station right at the very moment she was writing about the High Park-located sanatorium), I was actually wondering how non-Torontonians would ever really *get* it. But clearly, you do. That is just how good Atwood is. She makes setting and protagonist, an intertwined character, particular and universal, both.

Shouldn't the final in the O&C/Year of the Flood trilogy be out soon - anyone know?

PS - what am I missing in these poutine references? Poutine is not Toronto. Maybe now, but only as a transplant from Quebec, and certainly not in Atwood's Toronto.

Elizabeth wrote: "Cat's Eye! Cat's Eye! Personally, I prefer The Robber Bride but this is a close second, very very close, almost like twins. :-)"

Agreed!

there is no listing for it in my bookmaster computer, yet....

Jennifer (aka EM) wrote: "PS - what am I missing in these poutine references? Poutine is not Toronto. Maybe now, but only as a transplant from Quebec, and certainly not in Atwood's Toronto."

hi jennifer: i'm not sure if you're missing anything: obviously, yes, for years you could only get good poutine in quebec, but the city is now teeming with poutine, all- you-can-eat-poutine contests, and halal restaurants boasting poutine. i like poutine, and when my american friends come to toronto to visit, they want to eat poutine. and while i haven't read cat's eye in a long time, i never saw it as a love letter to toronto, so i guess we just have different perspectives but clearly, mine is the odd-opinion out when it comes to atwood. i only like her poetry. :)

i could eat a lot of poutine, i bet.

karen wrote: "i could eat a lot of poutine, i bet."

i thought of you when they posted the contest. i thought, karen could have been a contender! and then i thought about the shame i feel about inaugurating an ice cream eating contest which i didn't win once! not in four years!

also, poutine-related: last year i was standing on a street corner eating poutine out of a cup, and somebody rolled down their window in the taxi stopped next to me to intone: THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR EATING YOGURT IN A CAN.

who ever heard of yogurt in a can? and how dare this cab fellow try to prescribe the right time? :)

Maureen wrote: "karen wrote: "ha! well, i just finished another book set in toronto that didn't do any favors for your treatment of immigrant populations, but i'm not holding it against y'all...

poutine solves al..."

rawi hage has something to say about Montreal, but doesn't mention Toronto

hahaahah when is the right time for that?? crazy. i think i would definitely lose an ice cream eating contest. my brain would hate it.

Maureen wrote: "i never saw it as a love letter to toronto"...

No, it's not - you're absolutely right. It's actually a love-hate/attraction-avoidance rage against the colonial, uptight, WASPy, narrow, rigid, roll-up-the-sidewalks-at-8pm kind of place that everyone outside of Toronto always accuses it of being. That's Atwood's Toronto - and it's poutine-free. But it imprints her characters indelibly, shapes them and scars them as surely as the schoolyard bully and most tempestuous, damaging love affair does. But let Atwood tell it:

"I've never believed either version, the dull, the world-class. Dull isn't a word you'd use to describe such misery, and enchantment.

And I can't believe it's changed. Driving in from the airport ... mile after mile of caution and utilitarianism, and then through the centre of the city with the glitz and the European-style awnings and the paving-stones, I could see it's still the same. Underneath the flourish and ostentation is the old city, street after street of thick red brick houses, with their front porch pillars like the off-white stems of toadstools and their watchful, calculating windows. Malicious, grudging, vindictive, implacable.

In my dreams of this city I am always lost."

I love her (her? her protagonist(s)'? both.) rage against the whole suffocating conventionality of the place. You have to admit, even today, Toronto reeks of it. And I say that as someone who really does love the city and am 'of' the city - for good and for ill.

Thanks for the review. I have read and loved several of her books, but haven't gotten to this one yet!

wow. this just moved to the very top of my reading list.

Thanks for the pithy review, Miss Karen. I have read this book three or four times and insist that anyone who gives a rat's ass about me read it as well. So far, women seem to appreciate Atwood more than men. Hmmm.

Jennifer (aka EM) wrote: "Maureen wrote: "i never saw it as a love letter to toronto"...

No, it's not - you're absolutely right. It's actually a love-hate/attraction-avoidance rage against the colonial, uptight, WASPy, na..."

hi jennifer: i appreciate what you're saying here, and i mulled over whether i should respond to it, because i don't want you to think i'm being belligerent, but i too am entirely immersed in this city, and was born and raised here, and did not have the same experience as you or atwood have, though i think the initial description of the drive from the airport properly echoes the stretch from mississauga. i would like to suggest that toronto is a city of pockets and neighbourhoods, and that one might miss out on the WASP-y aspects that she points up in cat's eye if you don't live in those neighbourhoods: in fact, had i not bussed in to the same high school that atwood graduated from in 1957, i would not have recognized at all this version of toronto. i would venture to say that her description is perhaps more applicable to leaside, and the more monied parts of the city than the danforth that i grew up on, or the parkdale where i now live. perhaps these neighbourhoods were not so vibrant in her day, but i'm happy to say i have limited experience with atwood's toronto. and of course, i am glad the book resonates so deeply for you, and for karen, and so many other people.

here is a photo i took last night for you and karen: :)

yummmm! i just ate the hugest meal ever, and yet that photo still appeals to me.....

Now THAT is a multi-cultural feast.

This is one of my favorites,too. Atwood has never written a better novel. I heard her read it in a Smithsonian lecture series-great fun as she has a dryly funny reading style. I still remember the peeling feet....

Smokes has an excellent Veggie Deluxe poutine, with sauteed onions and mushrooms, plus a lovely blanket of green peas overtop. I really liked The Edible Woman.

ohhhhhh that sounds good, man!

i had vegan poutine in montreal. it was not as good as actual poutine.

i found another fake meat place here!! come back!

Mmm, fake meat...