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
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