Read December 10th- 15th.
Iris starts with her sister Laura's death. The narrative of Iris' memoirs cover her present life as well as her past- and this is juxtaposed with the novel that Laura wrote, and the story within that novel. Gradually, inevitably, you realize that nothing is what it seems, and that everything is coiled together.
This is a beautifully executed social commentary as well as a wonderfully told story. Atwood has a brilliant way of wording and presenting things.
The dynamics between the sexes are rather brutal and sometimes hard to read, even between loved ones, but still the portrayals ring true. I find the peach women particularly disturbing, as it reveals such disturbing thinking, and is purportedly told to be more or less amusing. What happens to Iris and Laura is especially upsetting as well.
That kind of thing doesn't run in her family: her mother Reenie never went in much for God. There was mutual respect, and if you were in trouble naturally you'd call on him, as with lawyers; but as with lawyers, it would have to be bad trouble. Otherwise it didn't pay to get too mixed up with him. Certainly she didn't want him in her kitchen, as she had enough on her hands as it was. (p. 52)
Standing there with the jar in one hand and my finger in my mouth, I had the feeling that someone was about to walk into the room- some other woman, the unseen, valid owner- and ask me what in hell I was doing in her kitchen. I've had it before, the sense that even in the course of my most legitimate and daily actions- peeling a banana, brushing my teeth- I am trespassing. (p. 56)
All around them were the snow-covered rocks and white icicles- everything white. Under their feet was the ice, which was white also, and under that the river water, with its eddies and undertows, dark but unseen. This how I pictured that time, the time before Laura and I were born- so blank, so innocent, so solid to all appearances, but thin ice all the same. (p. 69)
The picture in the book is of a leaping man covered in flames- wings of fire coming from his heels and shoulders, little fiery horns sprouting from his head. He's looking over his shoulder with a mischievous, enticing smile, and he has no clothes on. The fire can't hurt him, nothing can hurt him. I am in love with him for this reason. I've added extra flames with my crayons. (p. 82)
&
This messenger appeared to him in the guise of a flame, with numerous eyes and wings of fire shooting out. (p. 117)
(What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies. Now that I've been one myself, I know.) (p. 94)
She began to fret about God's exact location. It was the Sunday-school teacher's fault: God is everywhere, she'd said, and Laura wanted to know: was God in the sun, was God in the moon, was God in the kitchen, the bathroom, was he under the bed? ("I'd like to wring that woman's neck," said Reenie,) Laura didn't want God popping out at her unexpectedly, not hard to understand considering his recent behavior. Open your mouth and close your eyes and I'll give you a big surprise, Reenie used to say, holding a cookie behind her back, but Laura would no longer do it. She wanted her eyes open. It wasn't that she distrusted Reenie, only that she feared surprises.
Probably God was in the broom closet. It seemed the most likely place. He was lurking in there like some eccentric and possibly dangerous uncle, but she couldn't be certain whether he was there at any given moment because she was afraid to open the door. "God is in your heart," said the Sunday-school teacher, and that was even worse. If in the broom closet, something might have been possible, such as locking the door. (pp. 137-8)
More and more I feel like a letter- deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one. (p. 169)
Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist;it means testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies - loaf givers. (This, and the following commentary- p. 181)
Water is nebulous, it has no shape, you can pass your hand right through it; yet it can kill you. The force of such a thing is its momentum, its trajectory. What it collides with, and how fast. (p. 270)
[What is] More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?
That's a new one.
Take a guess.
I give up.
Nothing. (p. 271)
Into the plastic basket went my selections, and off I set, step by step, sideways down the stairs, like Little Red Riding Hood on her way to Granny's house via the underworld. Except that I myself am Granny, and I contain my own bad wolf. Gnawing away, gnawing away. (p. 366)
But why bother about the end of the world? It's the end of the world every day, for someone. Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes, you drown. (p. 478)
We weren't prepared for it, but at the same time we knew we'd been there before. It was the same chill, the chill that rolled in like a fog, the chill into which I was born. As then, everything took on a shimmering anxiety- the chairs, the tables, the streets and the street lights, the sky, the air. Overnight, whole portions of what had been acknowledged as reality simply vanished. This is what happens when there's a war. (p. 478)
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