Bookish Déjà-Vu: Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood

In school children learn more than just book knowledge. Apart from the family it’s the most important environment for their socialisation, a place where they have to struggle more or less on their own with the puzzling dynamics of peer groups and with the complex maze of unwritten, often odd rules governing relations with others, be they friends or foes. Quite naturally, school mirrors society at large with all its positive and negative aspects which prevents it from being a paradise where everybody is always good and happy. In fact, children can be mean, even cruel toward each other as the protagonist of Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood, which I decided to feature as a bookish déjà-vu this week, experienced herself in primary school after World War II. Neither the passage of forty years, nor success as a painter could make her forget having been bullied by her “best friends”.
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