Sunday: Other People's Sentences

Here are several sentences from a paragraph that I think is Good. It's from Cat's Eye and Margaret Atwood wrote it.

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The telephone rings. It's Grace. "You want to come out and play?" she says, in her neutral voice that is at the same time blank and unsoft, like glazed paper. I know Cordelia is standing beside her. If I say no, I will be accused of something. If I say yes, I will have to do it. I say yes.

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I have so many different books that are like relatives---much bigger than my actual family---and Cat's Eye is definitely my favorite protective Aunt. There was such a gigantic kerfuffle about The Handmaid's Tale so if you only read one Margaret Atwood book and that was it you'd be wandering around with the wrong impression. Cat's Eye has the all time best mean girl character and she is referenced in the paragraph above. Cordelia. Mean in that way that only little girls can be mean and devastatingly uncaring in that way only a creepy jealous mean girl can be. And mean in that way that makes you want to stick with her until she redeems herself.

I like flipping through this book and reading a paragraph here and a page there every now and then just to remember that feeling of meeting Cordelia for the first time and loving Margaret Atwood for putting a name on that insidious thing that starts the first time you say "Yes, I wanna come out and play" even when you don't want to because you're afraid of what Cordelia might say.

Yours In Scrunched Forehead Wonder,
Jenny From Ballistics