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BEATING THE BULLIES
THE bestselling author suggests key novels to help you through the trickier times in life.
AN OCCASIONAL delight of adult life is to come across the bully of your schooldays and see what’s become of them. The terror of our third form — and I mean terror, like Robespierre on acid — is now just any other miserable, middle-aged frump.
It’s hilarious to think we all once lived in fear of her. But that’s school for you: a closed world with its own rules. In Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood, we meet Elaine, a successful artist back in her home town for an exhibition and reflecting on the psychological horror of her past.
At school she had made friends with a new girl, Cordelia, and was turned on by her little gang of hitherto sweet girls. They bullied her horribly, she started to sink under the weight of it until she had a sudden realisation: they could only do that because she was allowing herself to be their victim. And with that blinding flash, she sets herself free.
That’s one alternative. The other is to get your own back. Stephen King’s Carrie does that, for sure.
Unusual children are always more vulnerable, and it’s fair to say Carrie falls into that category, what with her telekinetic powers and her loopy-doop mum. Her appalling year is topped by a prom that’s spectacularly gothic. It may not be the happiest of endings, but on the upside, those bullies certainly won’t do it again.
But school is school: horrible when you’re there, once you’re out of it, you’re in the clear, right? Er, no. There are all sorts of little worlds in which we adults find ourselves and where personalities become distorted. Such as the workplace, for instance.
In The Devil Wears Prada, the editor of a magazine is queen bee, her acolytes are vicious and anyone over a size 8 is classed as ‘fat’. Poor Andrea, the Devil’s new assistant, doesn’t fit in and is acutely miserable. Her mistake is to think she is stuck there.
She should remember the other delight of adult life: if it’s that bad, you can — you must — just walk away.