ever her thoughts, dreams, and remembrances encompass her entire life in a rough chronological order. At the opening of the novel, Rennie is a young Toronto journalist. She has no aspirations to be a star and is content with doing what she does. She hates covering articles that deal with mainstream trends or fads, but instead prefers trying to create non-existent trends by fabricating them in her articles. "Rennie liked to write pieces on trends that didn't really exist, to see if she could make them exist by writing about them."(Atwood 25). By doing this she is resisting the pendulum, pushing against the norm, versus Larry who would have merely wrote an article on the latest pop-culture fad. Rennie's path to self-realization begins with her contracting breast cancer. This is followed by a nasty break-up with her boyfriend of several years (because of the breast cancer), falling into hopeless love with her married doctor, and her house being broken into. The intruder stole nothing, merely left a length of rope on he
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