Rating: 
Summary: Haunting Look at the Ways Our Bodies Can Be Harmed
Review: The aptly-named Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood is a suspensfully-woven tale that keeps you turning pages. Focused on the harms that can befall a woman, it takes a philosophical look at both the physical and emotional dangers Rennie Wilford faces as she comes to terms with a major life change.After her mastectomy, journalist Rennie Wilford and her boyfriend break up and she begins a strange affair with her doctor, who makes her feel almost complete. However, when Rennie returns to her apartment one day to find a length of coiled rope on her bed and no sign of forced entry, she is convinced that it would be a good idea to take a long vacation and get out of town for a while. Under these circumstances, Rennie ends up on the island of St. Antoine in the Caribbean during a time of political upheaval. There she finds herself being drawn into a complex and dangerous world she doesn't understand. A recurring image of Rennie's grandmother, who has misplaced her hands, seems to serve as a grand metaphor for the story. It seems like throughout the process and aftermath of her mastectomy, Rennie won't let people get close to her or touch her. This leads to her breakup with her boyfriend. She has forgotten how to reach outside of herself. Wrapped up in her own misery, she is self-focused, and it is only as she is drawn into the events in St. Antoine that she really gets past her physical change and grows to understand what it means to be a truly complete woman. Atwood is always very good at making even banal surroundings seem sinister, and the events surrounding Rennie in St. Antoine are written to keep you on the edge of your seat. Trust no one, for they are not who they seem. But trust Atwood to give you a good excuse to sit home on a Friday night.
Rating: 
Summary: Discomforting and disturbing
Review: This is the second novel by Atwood that I've read, along with a few short stories, and I'm not sure I have the intestinal fortitude to read another. Her grim themes pop up again here like mushrooms after a spring rain. Like "The Handmaid's Tale", this novel is suffused with anger and darkness, although the locale this time is a sunny tropical island. Rennie, the main character, is a thoroughly unlikable woman: bitter, angry, cynical, a bit of a coward. Very human, in other words. The story flips back and forth between what is happening on the island and her life back in a sterile and constricted Canada. Through the painful events in the book, it seems that blame for all the violence and agony in the world is laid at the feet of men: men as users and abusers, corrupted by power, not to be trusted, but also loved and desired despite all that (and does that make us women "weak" and somehow partners in our own subjugation?) I found all the ambivalence very wearing. But life is full of ambivalence. Those looking for a light relaxing read that leaves no aftertaste would be advised to choose something else.
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