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By the author of The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace
Elaine Risley, a painter, returns to Toronto to find herself overwhelmed by her past. Memories of childhood – unbearable betrayals and cruelties – surface relentlessly, forcing her to confront the spectre of Cordelia, once her best friend and tormentor, who has haunted her for forty years.
‘Not since Graham Greene has a novelist captured so forcefully the relationship between school bully and victim…Atwood’s games are played, exquisitely, by little girls’ LISTENER
An exceptional novel from the winner of the 2000 Booker Prize
Elaine Risley, a painter, returns to Toronto to find herself overwhelmed by her past. Memories of childhood – unbearable betrayals and cruelties – surface relentlessly, forcing her to confront the spectre of Cordelia, once her best friend and tormentor, who has haunted her for forty years.
‘Not since Graham Greene has a novelist captured so forcefully the relationship between school bully and victim…Atwood’s games are played, exquisitely, by little girls’ LISTENER
An exceptional novel from the winner of the 2000 Booker Prize
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Reviews
Not since Graham Greene or William Golding has a novelist captured so forcefully the relationship between school bully and victim...Atwood's power games are played, exquisitely, by little girls
Irrestistible...This book is about life for all of us. She is one of our finest novelists. Read it
Atwood's taut and exquisite use of language makes all her books irresistable...
Margaret Atwood charts the psychological process of memory as compulsion and memory as a healing act through the character of Elaine Risley, an artist who returns to her home town of Toronto for a retrospective of her work. Elaine's visit triggers though
I read this when I was about sixteen and remember its menace. It is about the potential toxicity in female friendships, which is a contentious issue. Atwood is never pigeonholed, she's wry and has a poet's eye