Rating: 
Summary: psychological self-analysis piece or action thriller? Both.
Review: 'Bodily Harm' is certainly not the best work by the sometimes brilliant Margaret Atwood. I'm not sure what possessed her to write about a young woman undergoing deep self-examination after having a mastectomy and, bizarrely, soon finds herself in some civil unrest in a banana republic. What saves this book from being totally silly are the characterizations and Atwood's stellar prose. However I have to admit the last twenty percent of 'Bodily Harm' where our central character is caught up in political unrest whilst on a holiday-from-hell is really a waste. Not terrible, just wholely implausible.
There probably isn't much value in describing the plot further. For those who loved Atwood's more female-centric novels (such as 'The Robber Bride') I recommend 'Bodily Harm'. But for those who have not experienced the wonder of Margaret Atwood I suggest reading 'The Blind Assassin'.
Bottom line: an uneven but overall decent read.
Rating:
Summary: Mean
Review: A good book. At times unendingly long and hoerndousely pretentiouse. The book backtracks into boring epesodes. It is still however a good read, though Attwood has surely turned out better books.
Rating:
Summary: Rennie as the 'every woman'
Review: Although I have not read many Atwood novels, when I pick up one of her books I expect to be provoked intellectually and emotionally. Bodily Harm kept me reading well into the night, and I was amazed at Atwood's ability to write so evocatively. I noticed early on that while I did not like Rennie, the main character, I did empathize with her. Before breast cancer hits her, Rennie is the 'every woman' and not in a positive sense. Breast cancer and the ensuing chaos in her life leads her to question her purpose as a survivor. The theme of finding a purpose in the midst of tragedy is used often in popular fiction, and Atwood does a good job with it. The synopsis of this book sounds trite, but in actually, the book is very dense and stimulating. It is replete with symbolism and meaning, and I will be reading Bodily Harm again.
Rating: 
Summary: Bodily Harm a Disappointment
Review: I bought Bodily Harm looking forward to another great book from Margaret Atwood. Although written with Atwood's characteristically witty, deliciously descriptive language, the book fails on the content.
The protagonist is a woman who has just gone through mastectomy, a loss with which she is trying to come to terms. Depressed further over the breakup with her boyfriend, she travels to a small island on the Caribbean to write a "fun in the sun" -article for a magazine. The vacation turns into a nightmare--the nation is undergoing a civil war.
The book is replete with imagery of violence, pain, death, and suffering. This is not recommended bedtime reading, and not for the faint-of-heart.
Rating:
Summary: Shoulda stayed at home girl!
Review: I enjoyed this novel on many levels. It is a great story, skilfully woven, laced with trademark Atwood satiric wit and all of the brand-name dropping you've come to expect: Drano, Holiday Inn, McDonald's, Elastoplast, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Bank of Nova Scotia, Chatelaine magazine, Ovaltine, Crest toothpaste, and not just soup, but Campbell's Chicken Noodle. I love how she does this, it seems so... Canadian!
The strength of Bodily Harm is the way Atwood delves deep into the psyche of the protagonist, the young female Toronto journalist, Rennie Wilford. Flashback portions reveal Rennie's history, connecting us to her narrow/stifled/religiously-hypocritical upbringing in backwater Griswold Ontario. It's a history she resents. Flashbacks illuminate her relationship history also. We really get to KNOW Rennie, and the more light that Atwood throws across this life, the more Rennie emerges as someone unfulfilled at her core.
And now Rennie's life is on the fritz. She is coming to terms with her partial mastectomy and the recent breakup with Jake, two problems that she imagines are directly related to each other. She becomes obsessed with the word "malignant" and feels that everyone dear to her (even her own body) is rejecting her. On top of this, someone has just broken into her apartment and, instead of robbing her, has left behind an ominous threatening message.
Change of scenery is badly needed.
So Rennie accepts a Caribbean assignment to the island of St. Antoine, and now comes the part of the story that could be summarized by saying "Shoulda stayed at home!"
This "tropical paradise" is really an economically depressed dump! And her small-town Ontario naivete is no match for the shifty characters she meets on this island. She is soon intricately involved in the political turmoil of St. Antoine, and her trip ends up being everything BUT the paradise and recuperation she was hoping for.
Illegal smuggling, bloodshed, betrayal, malnourishment, imprisonment... forget emotional improvement, physical survival becomes the issue!
It's as though Rennie goes to St. Antoine because of bodily harm from within, and finds that she must leave the island because of bodily harm from without. There's more to the story than this for sure, but this is an interesting aspect of it. The island did nothing to solve her problems, but it certainly made her see those problems for what they were... a part of her life, but not the whole.
Rating:
Summary: Not as enlightening as others by this author
Review: I have read many books by Atwood, so when I opened up Bodily Harm I anticipated her normal themes. But, much to my chagrin I came across a book that lacked any of Atwoods normalcy. The main character was a little to far- fetched for me. My recommedation is that if you are looking to read a good Atwood book keep on looking
Rating:
Summary: a little too grim even for me
Review: I'm a big Margaret Atwood fan and have read and reread her novels over the years. I think I had read this one previously actually but blocked it from my mind because it is such a depressing and horrific read. I hate Rennie: I want to identify with her because she is someone in a terrible situation (trying to deal with her recovery from the masectomy)who warrants sympathy for her mental anguish. But she is thoroughly unlikeable: she is a coward and that never changes. I kept thinking there was hope for her; she used to write, think, and talk about the "important" issues. Now she keeps insisting that she only does "lifestyles" or jewelry or whatever. I thought, OK, so all this awful ugliness on the island will be justified because she will regain her voice and write a real journalistic piece on the politic upheaval. She will become proactive. But in the end she is still totally inert, codependent, and frustratingly meek, naive, and detached.
Also, as a side note, this book makes the 80s seem very, very far away, like another time in history--which I guess they are now. But having grown up during the 70s and 80s, I feel generally attached to it. This 80s of darkness, despair, rape, murder, and hardcore, twisted pornography feels unfamiliar to me (and the latter does actually make even the oblivious Rennie vomit). Not to say these things didnt exist then, but why write about them without providing a commentary that explicitly denounces them in that Atwoodian way we know and love? The main character seems to be over the whole women's movement thing; she treats it like last year's hemline. And she doesn't mind when her boyfriend wants to very realistically pretend to rape her and gets off on that. She just does what he wants, whenever he wants it, without question, without any expression of her self and her desires. When she visits the porno exhibit in the police station where they collect things from raids, she and her friend laugh at the instruments there and Rennie seems oblivious to the fact that the culture surrounding the violent pieces (not all of them are, of course) in the exhibit is the culture that impacts her life (the rapist who visits her house and breaks in the window to wait for her who, BTW, could easily be her ex coming for her because he used to get off on this exact scenario [he would break in] as part of his rape-fantasy thing. She is unable to have sex with her boyfriend in this way after the operation b/c now that she is harmed, she feels vulnerable to these "fantasies", and the fear is all too real for play-acting).
I just don't get what this book is intended to add to the world of literature. Handmaid's Tale too is a dark tale but the protagonist is a subversive and you root for her the whole time. This character is detestable and the world is wholly detestable as well. The symbols seem odd and not really symbolic of anything; but you know that b/c they are oft-repeated, they are supposed to be symbolic of something. I'm sorry if this review doesnt have any cohesiveness but I feel that is also represenative of the book itself! I talked myself into giving it 3 stars instead of the 2 I originally intended; it's more obvious to me now that Atwood put a fair amount of effort into some of the constructs, I just still can't comes to terms with why she bothered to do so to tell this seemingly pointless tale.
Rating: 
Summary: Hated It
Review: I've read most of Margaret Atwood's books. This, by far, is one of my favorites. This author has a way of pulling you into the stories and feeling the feelings of the characters. There is also a lot meaning behind her words.This was truly a fast read. I really liked the character, Rennie, although at one point in the book I was ready to clobber Paul for her. If you like Margaret Atwood, don't miss reading this one!
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: I've read most of Margaret Atwood's books. This, by far, is one of my favorites. This author has a way of pulling you into the stories and feeling the feelings of the characters. There is also a lot meaning behind her words. This was truly a fast read. I really liked the character, Rennie, although at one point in the book I was ready to clobber Paul for her. If you like Margaret Atwood, don't miss reading this one!
Rating: 
Summary: Happiness and cheer abound
Review: Sure it does. It is very much not a good idea for a reader to attempt to psychoanalyze an author through their own works, because not only will you probably come to the wrong conclusions, but the ones you do come up with will probably creep you out just a little bit. To whit: Margaret Atwood probably is a delightfully cheery woman who quite enjoys life and all she encounters . . . however that sure doesn't come across in her novels. In her best novels the misery her characters suffer often eventually dovetails into a gloriously insightful epiphany of sorts. And in other cases you often feel like just guilty reading the book, after a while you get the impression by continuing to read you're furthering the character's Job-like troubles. Life Before Man was a bit of a downer but at least it was spread over four people . . . here poor Rennie has to take it all on the chin herself. Young woman journalist Rennie is sent to a Caribbean island to write a vacation type story . . . what happens is quite simply the vacation from hell. There's really no other way to put it. Nobody is what they seem, Rennie is totally out of place and things start getting very serious before anyone knows what's going on. However if that's all there was to the book then it would simply be a matter of plodding on to see what Ms Atwood is going to do next to poor Rennie. To save the story, Atwood details Rennie's crumbling relationship with her boyfriend, as well as her relationships with both her family and others . . . these quasi-flashbacks (some are given as monologues, though I'm not sure who she's talking to) are interspersed throughout the novel and are where the story truly shines. When she wants to Atwood can get right to the heart of a person and choose the exact right words to get the emotions right. The ending alone is one of the best examples of a stark prose style I've ever seen. So ignore the quasi-political intrigue plot and instead focus on a masterful character study by one of the few authors who know how to get such things right. The feelings she reveals may be painful but you can't argue that she's all that far off.
|
