Table of Contents

• Books
  1. Cat’s Eye
  2. A Pale View of Hills
  3. An Artist of the Floating World
  4. The Remains of the Day
  5. The Penelopiad
  6. The Robber Bride
  7. The Water Cure
  8. Stone Mattress
  9. Darling Bud
  10. Dancing Girls
  11. Murder in the Dark
  12. Bluebeard’s Egg
  13. Good Bones and Simple Murder
• Poems and Short Stories
  1. Dishsoap Quarterly
  2. Prospect
• Music
  1. This is Not a Place of Honor
  2. Winged
  3. Courtney

Books

Cat’s Eye, by Margaret Atwood

Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 240

Cat’s Eye is Atwood’s opus. It is the most impactful book I have ever read.

“What’s in your pocket?” says Cordelia.

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s only a marble.”

It’s marble season; everyone has marbles in their pockets. Cordelia lets it pass. She doesn’t know what power this cat’s eye has to protect me. Sometimes when I have it with me I can see the way it sees. I can see people moving like bright animated dolls, their mouths opening and closing but no real words coming out. I can look at their shapes and sizes, their colors, without feeling anything else about them. I am alive in my eyes only.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 157

Also, a tricky read: it was tough to make out the print while crying.

Cordelia did the same thing, at the same age. The same folded arms, the same immobile face, the blank-eyed stare. Cordelia! Put on your gloves, it’s cold out. So? I can’t come over, I have to finish my homework. So?

Cordelia, I think. You made me believe I was nothing.

So?

To which there is no answer.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 219

Among many other things, Cat’s Eye is a devastating exploration of the work that is required to find empathy, and how natural it is to pass on cruetly you have recieved.

Cordeila is afraid of me, in this picture.

I am afraid of Cordelia.

I’m not afraid of seeing Cordelia. I’m afraid of being Cordelia. Because in some way we changed places, and I’ve forgotten when.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 249

If everyone read this book, the world would be a much better place. It is a treatise against eye-for-an-eye thinking.

I wonder, for an instant, how I can be so mean to my best friend. For this is what she is.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 270

The relatable mundanity of Elaine’s story makes it more visceral and affecting to me than even the bleak dystopia of Gilead.

But nothing she can do or say will ever be enough, because she is somehow the wrong person.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 274

The novel has three distinct sections in my eyes; each is brilliant, and each has a tear-jerker ending more brutal than the last.

“A marble!” says my mother, with a child’s delight. “Remember all those marbles Stephen used to collect?”

“Yes,” I say. But this one was mine.

I look into it, and see my life entire.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 434

Until the final section, I had no idea where the story was ultimately headed. Then I figured it out.

She will have her own version. I am not the center of her story, because she herself is that. But I could give her something you can never have, except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is the part of hersef I could give back to her.

We are like the twins in old fables, each of whom has been given half a key.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 450

I began to dread what was to come, for it was sure to destroy me.

I know she’s looking at me, the lopsided mouth smiling a little, the face closed and defiant. There is the same shame, the sick feeling in my body, the same knowledge of my own wrongness, awkwardness, weakness; the same wish to be loved; the same loneliness; the same fear. But these are not my own emotions any more. They are Cordelia’s; as they always were.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 459

I was not disappointed.

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 462

It has maybe the best first-final page pair ever written.

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backwards in time and exist in two places at once.

— Cat’s Eye, pp. 1

If you read one Atwood book—hell, if you read a book at all—then do yourself a favor and make it this one.

— 5/5 —

A Pale View of Hills, by Kazuo Ishiguro

From where I sit, Kazuo Ishiguro is the most famous living literary novelist. Ever since he won the Nobel prize in 2017, I’ve had the intention of reading his work. Yesterday I went to the library to pick up my DVD hold for Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (I had to request an inter-library loan), and on a whim decided to look through what Ishiguro novels were available; I knew his books were short, and wanted something different before diving into another massive Atwood tome (The Robber Bride).

“You see,” I said, “the little girl isn’t on a swing at all. It seemed like that at first. But it’s not a swing she’s on.”

— A Pale View of Hills, pp. 96

A Pale View of Hills lived up to expectations. The dialogue was stilted and awkward, but in a very purposeful way; it’s possibly only a slight exageration of Japanese dialogue of the time period. In a way it’s very similar to a Margaret Atwood book—a very flawed elderly protagonist remembering her life, a central mystery with a subtle reveal that recontextualizes the story—but it’s written in an entirely different style. There was a level of distance between us and the character that left a lot for the reader to interpret.

— 4/5 —

An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro

I returned her smile, but did not say anything. Of course, the old district had been fine. We had all enjoyed ourselves and the spirit that had pervaded the bantering and those arguments had never been less than sincere. But then perhaps that same spirit had not always been for the best. Like many things now, it is perhaps as well that little world has passed away and will not be returning. I was tempted to say as much to Mrs Kawakami that evening, but decided it would be tactless to do so.

— An Artist of the Floating World, pp. 126-127

I think Ishiguro may be a little too meticulous and literary for my taste, and a little light on personality and emotion. In this second novel I was already used to his themes and devices, particularly the focus on the memory of an unreliable narrator, and I was much less impressed with what ultimately developed. There’s still great stuff, but I found it quite repetitive and predictable. I know much of the repetition was by design, but, again, it was not to my liking.

— 3/5 —

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro

I suffered all the more because I believed I was alone.

— The Remains of the Day, pp. 154

The Remains of the Day deserves its reputation: it is a near perfect novel. The structure does not feel as contrived as in Ishiguro’s first two books, nor is the unreliable narrator hammer used to such a frustrating extent. It is also surprisingly readable and funny for being such a famous piece of literary fiction. I identify with Stevens to a frightening extent.

— 5/5 —

The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood

Proof that The Odyssey story can be told in such a way that I connect with its characters; I dislike Nolan’s film more and more with every passing day. But while The Penelopiad is a good book, I found it a bit short and slight compared with the rest of her bibliography. I enjoyed the begininning of the story the most, as well as the more experimental chapters like the jury trial.

— 3/5 —

The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood

But she was disguised as herself, one of the most successful disguises.

— The Robber Bride, pp. 135

The Robber Bride is far more opaque and mysterious than most of Atwood’s works: it never explains itself, not in so many words. Is it a comedy?

The twins are in the family room, watching a rerun of Star Trek.

“Greetings, Earthmom,” says Paula.

“Maybe she isn’t Mom,” says Erin. “Maybe she’s a Replicant.”

“Hi, kids,” says Roz. “It’s way past your bedtime! Where’s Larry?”

“Erla’s done our homework,” says Erin. “This is our reward.”

“Mom, what’s wrong?” says Paula. “You look like shit.”

“It’s old age,” says Roz.

— The Robber Bride, pp. 499

I laughed out loud many times, yet it contains perhaps the most disturbing chapters Atwood has ever written. Is it a thriller? A noir? A mystery? No, it isn’t any of those either. It’s often obtuse, along the lines of Surfacing, but with themes and a plot structure somewhere in the vicinity of Life Before Man and Cat’s Eye: we only think of the world from our point of view; empathy is work, it’s unnatural.

Before she goes to bed, Charis does a meditation on Zenia. She needs to do this, because although she has often thought about Zenia in relation to herself, or to Billy, or even to Tony and Roz, she has never truly considered what Zenia was in and by herself: the Zenia-ness of Zenia. She has no object, nothing belonging to Zenia, to focus on, so instead she turns off the lights in the living room and stares out the window, into the darkness, towards the lake. Zenia was sent into her life—was chosen by her—to teach her something. Charis doesn’t know what it was yet, but in time she will uncover it.

— The Robber Bride, pp. 498

Was Zenia a villain? I don’t think so. She was a survivor. Was Zenia real? Surely she existed in some respect, but it seems impossible that all the aspersions cast by our three protagonists were true, or could be true of any one person. Most accounts of her villainy came from heresay and supposition, or from the mouth of back-from-the-dead Zenia, whose bizarre nature I haven’t quite puzzled out.

The mere absence of a body would not stop Zenia; she would just take somebody else’s. The dead return in other forms, she thinks, because we will them to.

— The Robber Bride, pp. 517

The final two chapters give a lot of support to pro-Zenia theories, e.g. Charis’ realization about Billy. Maybe Zenia, in fact, rescued these women from horrible relationships! She’s a hero then, a vigilante? Was the story all about internalized misogyny, women blaming women in lieu of the true male culprits? But I don’t believe it’s that clear cut either.

— 5/5 —

Update: Zenia defenders rejoice! In Stone Mattress there is a sequel story set twenty years later: I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth. Apart from being a lovely epilogue to the novel—Atwood seems to have developed a taste for happy endings in her later years—it heavily supports my reading of things:

In fact, says Charis, maybe Zenia’s intentions were benevolent all along. Maybe she stole Billy to protect Charis from such a bad apple as him. Maybe she stole West to teach Tony a life lesson about, well music appreciation or something, and maybe she stole Mitch to clear the way for Roz’s much better husband, Sam. Maybe Zenia was, like, the secret alter ego for each of them, acting out stuff for them they didn’t have the strength to act out by themselves. When you looked at it that way…

— Stone Mattress, pp. 156

Now this is Charis talking, of course, so it is a more optimistic view than the one I’d put forward—and likely more optimistic than the vision Atwood had in mind—but I think it’s closer to the truth than anything any of the three said or thought in the novel.

The Water Cure, by Sophie Mackintosh

I’m not sure what to take away from the plot of The Water Cure, but it was brilliantly written. A rare novel carried mostly by its prose.

For a second, I hate her. I want to lock my fingers around her throat. Then I remember as I always do that I am supposed to love her, so I look back into her eyes and think of an orb of pink light, my obedient heart.

— The Water Cure, pp. 77

I’ve seen some crtics state that the book takes a misandrist or “toxic feminist” point of view, but it did not come off that way to me. We are reading from the perspective of two abused, isolated women: I don’t think the text or the author fully endorse how Grace and Lia see the world. I thought James was presented as a very sympathetic character, and the ending felt similar to that of Carrie (1976): cathartic and tragic in equal parts.

It fits perfectly inside my palm and I slip it into my pocket, because even the unlovable deserve something, because I take my gifts where I can find them.

— The Water Cure, pp. 80

I also have to say that I found the book strangely erotic, even though there were no lurid descriptions and the “romance” was quite repulsive: I have no desire to live out a Llew fantasy, fooling around with an unstable woman who has been physically and mentally tortured for her entire life. No, what I mean is that Lia’s all-consuming desire was written in such a vivid, captivating way.

“I just thought I’d come and find you,” I say, self-concious. “To see if you wanted to do something.” I do not say anything we can do anything you want, not in front of the child, though if he was not there I might fall to my knees on the ground and beg.

“I’m busy,” he says. “Sorry.” He turns to Gwil. “Another game?” The child nods. As they walk back on the court, I run behind them. When I grab hold of Llew’s arm, he stops.

“Please,” I say, my mouth dry. “Please.” I can feel love slipping past me like a fast breeze. Like draining water. I am ready to humiliate myself, if that is what it takes. He pushes me a third time and I fall back, stagger hard to the ground. I am on my knees after all. Gwil looks at me in alarm.

— The Water Cure, pp. 196

Sophie Mackintosh is an interesting writer, and from interviews she seems like a lovely person; I’ll definitely read her later stuff. Plus she was the only participant out of the 100 writers surveyed for The Guardian’s 100 best novels article who put forward Morvern Callar.

— 3/5 —

Stone Mattress, by Margaret Atwood

He should have gone into Design, because he would have made a killing. But, said Tin, a killing was exactly what he didn’t want to make because to make a killing you had to kill, and he lacked the killer instinct.

— Stone Mattress, pp. 85

I picked up Stone Mattress from the library solely to read the sequel story to The Robber Bride: I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth (see above). However, I started reading from the beginning while on a camping trip, and it pulled me in immediately. I read the entire book in two days. Apart from the aforementioned Robber Bride epilogue, and the opening triliogy about a love triangle, the stories span different genres than Atwood usually writes in. It was very fun to to see her tackle horror and thriller with the same skill and wit that she brings to literary, historical, and speculative fiction.

Story Ranking:

1. The Dead Hand Loves You
2. The Freeze Dried Groom
3. Alphinland
4. I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth
5. Stone Mattress
6. Torching the Dusties
7. Revenant
8. Dark Lady
9. Lusus Naturae

But even Lusus Naturae is excellent: if I had to give number ratings, they’d all get a 4/5 (on the novel scale, they are among the best short stories I’ve ever read). Revenant and Dark Lady were ranked lower due to being very similar to her novels.

— 4/5 —

Darling Bud, by C. J. Skuse

I’m pot committed at this point: I’m going to read every one of these damned Sweetpea books. After The Bad Seeds I had zero confidence in Skuse as a storyteller, and for the first half here I thought she’d fully given in to self-indulgence. It reverentially quoted from the earlier books as Ivy read their in-universe equivalents, and seemed to be going down the predictable, stupid, route of least resistance. Here we go again, I’d thought: Skuse’s world is populated by comically evil men and women, and of course the only way for Ivy to survive will be violence.

Color me surprised then, when the book took the turns it did later on. I was convinced she was going to skrew it up, up until the very last word, but to my shock I found the ending both satisfying and surprising. If Ivy’s story ever continues, then it will be in a more interesting direction than I’d ever have expected. Despite being less funny, and following many annoying elements from Skuse’s formula, Darling Bud was a solid entry in the series.

— 3/5 —

A note on the audiobook: I read physical copies for the vast majority of the novels I write reviews for, but for the Sweetpea books I used audio and I’ve grown quite attached to Georgia Maguire’s narration. Her timing and line delivery sold every moment of comedy, and I loved her silly accent work, especially Rhiannon’s fake Australian and American accents. Needless to say, Emily Jackman had a lot to live up to, and I think she did an admirable job. She tried to match Maguire’s style, which made Ivy’s story sound like it existed in the same universe as Rhiannon’s, but having a new voice for the new point of view was the correct choice.

Dancing Girls, by Margaret Atwood

Ann sympathized with his loneliness, but she did not wish to become involved in it, implicated by it. She had enough trouble dealing with her own.

— Dancing Girls (1982 ed.), pp. 203

The more Atwood I read, the more impressed I am—quite a statement considering the first novel I read from her (Alias Grace) was my favorite book for ten years, and then only lost its place to Cat’s Eye. Dancing Girls is a short story collection, but it contains several of the best stories that I’ve read of any length. It also stands apart from her novels in terms of style; it was exciting to discover a new side to her, sixteen books into her bibliography.

On his way out to the car it struck him that he loved her. The thought filled him like a goal, a destiny. He would rescue her somehow; he could pretend she was a cousin or sister; he would keep her hidden in the apartment with all his dangerous implements, razors, knives, nail files, locked away; he would feed her, give her the right drugs, comb her hair. At night she would be there in the subzero bedroom for him to sink into as into a swamp, warm and obliterating.

This picture at first elated, then horrified him. He saw that it was only the hopeless, mad Louise he wanted, the one devoid of any purpose or defense. A sane one, one who could judge him, he would never be able to handle. So this was his dream girl then, his ideal woman found at last: a disintigration, mind returning to its component shards of matter, a defeated formless creature on which he could inflict himself like a shovel on earth, axe on forest, use withouth being used, know without being known. Louise’s notebook entry, written when she had surely been saner than she was now, had been right about him. Yet in self-defense he reasoned that his desire for her was not altogether evil: it was in part a desire to be reunited with his own body, which he felt less and less that he actually occupied.

— Dancing Girls, (1982 ed.), pp. 72-73

About half-way through reading the copy I had checked out from the library (published in 1982 by Simon & Schuster), I looked on Wikipedia and found out that there are two separate editions of Dancing Girls: each has fourteen stories, but two stories differ, making for sixteen stories in total. I acquired an ebook copy of the 1977 edition so that I could read what was missing: The War in the Bathroom and Rape Fantasies.

Story Ranking:

1. Polarities
2. Training
3. The Lives of Poets
4. A Travel Piece
5. Dancing Girls
6. The Sin Eater
7. Hair Jewellery
8. Rape Fantasies
9. The Grave of the Famous Poet
10. The Man From Mars
11. Giving Birth
12. Betty
13. When It Happens
14. The Resplendant Quetzal
15. The War in the Bathroom
16. Under Glass

The first six tales I’d give 5/5, the rest 4/5. Dancing Girls is one of the best, and one of the most underrated, books she has put out.

— 5/5 —

Murder in the Dark, by Margaret Atwood

“The look on her face!” we screamed.

But we were terrified. It was the look on her face, pure hatred, real after all. The undead walked among us.

— Murder in the Dark, pp. 13

It was cool to see an early precursor to Cat’s Eye (Horor Comics), but to be honest this felt like reading a random literary journal issue: a mediocre collection, with a few standouts.

I’ve got nothing against telepathy, said Jane; but the telephone is so much more dependable.

— Murder in the Dark, pp. 61

There were too many to do a full ranking, but the poems/stories I liked were: Making Poison, Horror Comics, Raw Materials, and Murder in the Dark. And, while Women’s Novels wasn’t my favorite, I did find it quite witty by the end.

— 2/5 —

Bluebeard’s Egg, by Margaret Atwood

That, they tell each other, is just like Loulou, and suddenly she sees that this is what they require of her, possibly all they require: that she should be just like Loulou. No more, but certainly no less. Maybe it’s not so bad.

— Bluebeard’s Egg, pp. 62

Bluebeard’s Egg doesn’t have the highs that Dancing Girls did, nor does it feel unique or different from her other writing, but it is a very consistent collection.

She can’t remember ever having astonished any of her friends with tricks from the instruction book. Astonishing herself was enough.

— Bluebeard’s Egg, pp. 173

The stories feel like miniature versions of her novels: Hurricane Harriet and Unearthing Suite are Cat’s Eye, Scarlet Ibis is Bodily Harm (same with A Travel Piece and Resplendant Quetzal from Dancing Girls). On the surface Uglypuss seems like it’s Life Before Man, but the eye-for-an-eye commentary and the throughline to Israel-Palestine reminded me, once again, of Cat’s Eye.

I plan on giving Unearthing Suite to my dad, just to see if he likes her writing. If so, I’m going to make him read Cat’s Eye at some point.

Story Ranking:

1. Unearthing Suite
2. Sunrise
3. Scarlet Ibis
4. The Sin Eater
5. Loulou; or, The Domestic Life of the Language
6. Uglypuss
7. Bluebeard’s Egg
8. Hurricane Hazel
9. Betty
10. Spring Song of the Frogs
11. The Salt Garden
12. Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother

For scores, I’d give Unearthing Suite a 5/5 and the rest 4/5. Note the two crossovers with the 1982 edition of Dancing Girls: Betty and The Sin Eater; I guess that’s why modern republishings of Dancing Girls follow the 1977 original: Bluebeard has us covered.

Nothing goes on forever. Sooner or later I will have to renounce my motionlessness, give up those habits of reverie, speculation, and lethargy by which I currently subsist. I will have to come to grips with the real world, which is composed, I know, not of words but of drain-pipes, holes in the ground, furiously multiplying weeds, hunks of granite, stacks of more or less heavy matter which must be moved from one point to the other, usually uphill.

How will I handle it? Only time, which does not by any means tell everything, will tell.

— Bluebeard’s Egg, pp. 242

This passage from Unearthing Suite hit close to home for me.

— 4/5 —

Good Bones and Simple Murders, by Margaret Atwood

She said, Better to get it over with when she’s young. He said, All right but don’t let me see it.

She came whizzing down the stairs, thrown like a dart. She was stark naked. Her hair had been chopped off, her head was turned back to front, she was missing some toes and she’d been tattooed all over her body with purple ink, in a scrollwork design. She hit the potted azalea, trembled there for a moment like a botched angel, and fell.

He said, I guess we’re safe.

— Good Bones and Simple Murders, pp. 73

Very similar to Murder in the Dark, many crossover pieces, but for some reason I enjoyed this much more. I still prefer her less dense/poetic short stories and fiction, though. Although I also love Surfacing, so who knows…

— 3/5 —

Poems and Short Stories

I’ve been reading a lot more short fiction publications, so from now on I’m only going to list the ones I loved.

Dishsoap Quarterly

• Tests to Determine Whether Moonboy Has a Soul, by Chris Scott
• We Wanted to Save the Planet, Then Summer Called, by Mathieu Parsy

Prospect

• The Labrador Fiasco, by Margaret Atwood

Music

This is Not a Place of Honor (2026), by Hana Bryanne

I’ve been looking forward to this all year and it still blew me away; it’s my album of the year, at least so far. Hana is criminally under the radar, how does she only have 10k monthly Spotify listens?

I’d love to buy her music, but she doesn’t sell CDs or Vinyl; I might have to pull the trigger on a Dollface baseball cap to show my support—I’ve certainly listened to that album enough.

Winged, by Lia Pappas-Kemps

Lia’s songs have autoplayed after other music on my Spotify all year, but this September I finally sought out the source. While it is a great collection, I think Orchid is head and shoulders above the rest: it’s an absolutely incredible song.

Courtney, song by Raffaella

I’ve been a casual fan of Raffaella since Blonde, but she’s been on another level entirely now that she started to collaborate with Samia. The music video for this song is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Bloodless was incredible and Raffaella is credited on (almost?) every track, so I’m not saying that the good influence is only going one way. Hopefully Raffaella puts a full album one of these years!