Atwood's wide-screen, cautionary Handmaid's Tale (1986) confirmed the author's place in the major leagues, and here she follows up with a work of intensity and tart wit. Where Handmaid's Tale took a long, allegorical view, this latest shows Atwood working more familiar territory of nuance and character. Acclaimed artist Elaine Risley returns to Toronto from Vancouver to attend a retrospective of her work, and--as the show's opening approaches--Risley's memories of a bitter Toronto childhood blend with the exile's ironic asides about a new city up to its eyeballs in money and new clothes. Just why Risley hates Toronto so much becomes clear when we're introduced to her childhood friends. At the center of the group is Cordelia, a future bad-girl who leads the others in routine tormenting of Elaine. The subterranean world of childhood and the uncanny ability of children to inflict abuse on one another are superbly captured here, as is the sulky twilight zone of adolescence. As Elaine and Cordelia progress through school, the tables begin to turn, and in the end Cordelia--mentally unstable and confined to a ""home""--finds herself at the mercy of Elaine. Along the way: finely drawn protraits of an emerging North American city in the 40's, 50's, and early 60's, with high marks going to Atwood's vivid depiction of the rituals of school, play, and friendship. All the better Atwood trademarks are here--wry humor, unforgiving detailed observation, a tart prose style--and likely to attract a wide audience. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

YA-- When Elaine Risley returns to her hometown, Toronto, for a retrospective show of her paintings, she finds more than critical acclaim. Local streets, long-gone landmarks, and elements in the paintings themselves trigger memories of her transient childhood traveling across Canada with her entomologist father; of adolescence marred by the cruel teasing of three friends; and of love affairs with her first art teacher and mentor, and with Jon, her first husband. In addition, Elaine is haunted by thoughts of her chief tormentor/best friend, Cordelia, whom she last saw years ago in a mental institution. Atwood's focus on the inner landscape of Elaine's youth and early adult years will appeal to older teenagers.-- Alice Conlon, University of Houston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Herself the daughter of a Canadian forest entomologist, Atwood writes in an autobiographical vein about Elaine Risley, a middle-aged Canadian painter (and daughter of a forest entomologist) who is thrust into an extended reconsideration of her past while attending a retrospective show of her work in Toronto, a city she had fled years earlier in order to leave behind painful memories. Most pointedly, Risley reflects on the strangeness of her long relations with Cordelia, a childhood friend whose cruelties, dealt lavishly to Risley, helped hone her awareness of our inveterate appetite for destruction even while we love, and are understood as characteristically femininea betrayal of other women that masks a ferocious betrayal of oneself. Atwood's portrayal of the friendship gives the novel its fraught and mysterious center, but her critical assessment of Cordelia and the ``whole world of girls and their doings'' also takes the measure of a coercive, conformist society (not quite as extreme as in the futuristic The Handmaid's Tale ). Emerging ``the stronger'' for her latecoming understanding of herself, Risley in the final pages rises above the ties that bound her, transcendently alive to the possibilities of ``light, shining out in the midst of nothing.'' BOMC main selection. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Atwood's candid, witty, and intensely moving novel about a feminist artist who remembers growing up in the 1940s and 1950s evokes the vicious power games played by young girls who call themselves "friends."

When artist Elaine Risley returns to her native Toronto for a retrospective of her work, she is nearly overcome by the pungent memories of childhood. These memories are not so pleasant, for as Atwood observes with deadly accuracy: ``Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.'' Having spent her early childhood on the road with her entomologist father--and only her brother as playmate--she is initially stymied by these life-sized terrors; she is more at ease with boys than with the calculated cruelties of girls. Indeed, many readers will identify painfully with Atwood's deft descriptions of the betrayals, exclusions, and power plays of Elaine's friends. The consequences for Elaine--suddenly evident even in her art--must now be annulled through vivid recall. Childhood's particular anguish has been told before, but Atwood is exceptional in her steady, dry-eyed revelation of the truth.-- Barbara Hoffert, ``Library Journal'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.