6. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

I had to check this out two times. I could not get into it the first time, but that might have been because my "fiction space" was so occupied with Dombey and Son by Dickens that I had no room for a modern author. When I finished Dicken, I realized I only had five more days to finish this 17-hour audiobook, but it was a fairly free weekend (with hubby sick and two things canceled), and I am prepared for the Instinctual Variant teaching I am doing. So, I decided to blitz it and take lots of walks and do things around the house. (Thus combining my blindspot of the self-preservation instinct [Zones for managing my home and take care of my body] with something I love to do and more in the Sexual instinct [anything that arouses or excites or takes you on an adventure - BOOKS!].)

Once I could fully focus, I really see the beauty of this book and why it would be on the 1000 Books to Read Before You Die List. It is a first-person narrative about a Canadian woman who comes of age in the 40s. She is an artist who has come back to her home town of Toronto for her artist's retrospective so she does a retrospective of her life. There are some female dynamics that I could relate to. As for all of us, much of her adult life is a response to what she experienced as a child. 

This book is written by the author of The Handmaid's Tale, but this one isn't creepy! So you get a good idea of why she is such a lauded author. Her writing really is wonderful. Once I had the head-space for this book, I was swept away in it.