After a long career, painter Elaine Risley
is back in Toronto where a gallery is mounting a retrospective of her work. Her return prompts memories of her childhood
and youth spent in the city. With
unconventional parents and a brilliant older brother her upbringing left her
ill-prepared for the schoolyard, neither able to form friendships with the other
girls nor deal with their spite and cruelties.
It seems she’s been dealing with it ever
since – in her art and in her relationships with the men in her life, which
both seem to attract the opprobrium of other women.
As the past and present intertwine a
personal and vivid picture of life in post-war and baby-boom Canada emerges,
illuminated both by the clarity of youth and the wisdom, or is it world-weary
cynicism, of age.
Even filtered through Elaine Risley’s
off-kilter narration, Margaret Atwood’s prose flows beautifully, and as ever
her articulation of the human condition hits the mark.
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