Rating: 
Summary: Atmospheric and fragmentary
Review: "Surfacing" is quite demanding on the reader.
The protagonist is numb, delusional at times, and extremely vague. As I slogged through the abstract metaphors, deliberately bad grammar, and fragmentary sentences, I became an excavator, trying to make sense of the tangents and stream of conciousness. We mustn't forget that this disarray is deliberate, it is supposed to mirror the protagonists headspace and confusion. It succeeds, but it makes the novel read like intangible random thoughts, rather than fluent prose.
The wilderness references here are meticulously informed, effectively descriptive, and the atmosphere created is genuinely eerie. It's a fair book if we can separate it from the rest of Atwood's admirable catalogue.
The problem is, the very thing we love about Atwood isn't here: her incisive wit is lost among the haze of the protagonist's perception. While this is a slim looking book, it's hardly an easy read, so be prepared to invest hour upon hour of attention and scrutiny to this work. "Surfacing" is thought provoking, slow-paced, a hum that will resonate. Overall, it does reward.
As this was only Atwood's second installment, it presents her talent in its formative stage. I'd recommended "Surfacing" only to those who are curious and have read her more pertinent works like "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Alias Grace".
Rating: 
Summary: Quest Symbolism in The Twilight Zone
Review: "Surfacing" is the second Atwood book I've experienced, and to be honest, I found her narrative style in this one more accessible than in "The Handmaid's Tale". The first 165 pages evoke a cynicism rooted deep in the apathy of 1970's North American culture, especially from a Canadian perspective. While Americans may find the references to the "flag-waving Yankees" the narrator loathes so much a bit distasteful in the light of recent events, the book must be taken as a narrative of one woman's personal struggle. While many of the narrator's opinions may find readers slightly offended, they provide a vehicle for her own personal frustration. The last few chapters seem a bit far-fetched compared to the others, but then again, I don't recommend reading the entire book in one sitting for that very reason. Though turned off by some elements of "weirdness" (the very same reason I didn't get into "The Handmaid's Tale"), I found "Surfacing" to be one of the most psychologically-challenging novels I've read, and perhaps the discomfort I felt while finishing the last page is post-magical-realism at its finest-- "There's no way this could happen...I think. Well...maybe?"Try it out for yourself, but please don't judge its value on a few anti-American references. Remember, she's Canadian, and the book was written in the 70's.
Rating:
Summary: Quest Symbolism in The Twilight Zone
Review: "Surfacing" is the second Atwood book I've experienced, and to be honest, I found her narrative style in this one more accessible than in "The Handmaid's Tale". The first 165 pages evoke a cynicism rooted deep in the apathy of 1970's North American culture, especially from a Canadian perspective. While Americans may find the references to the "flag-waving Yankees" the narrator loathes so much a bit distasteful in the light of recent events, the book must be taken as a narrative of one woman's personal struggle. While many of the narrator's opinions may find readers slightly offended, they provide a vehicle for her own personal frustration. The last few chapters seem a bit far-fetched compared to the others, but then again, I don't recommend reading the entire book in one sitting for that very reason. Though turned off by some elements of "weirdness" (the very same reason I didn't get into "The Handmaid's Tale"), I found "Surfacing" to be one of the most psychologically-challenging novels I've read, and perhaps the discomfort I felt while finishing the last page is post-magical-realism at its finest-- "There's no way this could happen...I think. Well...maybe?" Try it out for yourself, but please don't judge its value on a few anti-American references. Remember, she's Canadian, and the book was written in the 70's.
Rating: 
Summary: SURFACING
Review: "We don't receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." -Marcel Proust Take the journey. Find yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: boring and pretentious
Review: A very disappointing and awfully boring novel. Almost all the characters are flat, the language desultory and the plot painfully viscous. To all those of you who seem to think that you have to either love this novel or else you didn't grasp the full depths of it : i can well see the depths Atwood AIMED at (just as her "Survival" project of establishing a genuine Canadian literature is rubbed in on every single page!), but I think she fails to convey them convincingly by literary means. The fact that she wrote it in 1972 may be an excuse for the overabundant psychoanalytic, feminist and nationalist elements in it, but it is no excuse whatsoever for the poor literary quality of this novel, which claims a lot more than it can keep. Highly pretentious and not recommendable.
Rating:
Summary: The search for self
Review: Atwood's early novel is ostensibly the tale a young woman's return to her childhood home - a remote island in northern Quebec - to search for her mysteriously vanished father. But Atwood uses this tantalizing premise to draw you into something far more ambitious and interesting: a story about how returning to the sites of childhood can trigger the recovery of those parts of ourselves which have been repressed by the need to live in a particular kind of grown-up world - in this case, a modern and male one. The novel's probing of contemporary gender roles, male violence, Canadian nationalism and environmentalism are occasionally heavy-handed, but it always remains an extended metaphor rather than descending into a simplistic moral fable. What pulls it through is the credibility of the narrator's emotional experience as she descends deeper into her own past and her own psyche, all keenly articulated by Atwood with typically understated finesse. Like most of Atwood's fiction, "Surfacing" is a masterful balance of gripping plot, engaging ideas, and mesmerizing literary artifice.
Rating:
Summary: The search for self
Review: Atwood's early novel is ostensibly the tale a young woman's return to her childhood home - a remote island in northern Quebec - to search for her mysteriously vanished father. But Atwood uses this tantalizing premise to draw you into something far more ambitious and interesting: a story about how returning to the sites of childhood can trigger the recovery of those parts of ourselves which have been repressed by the need to live in a particular kind of grown-up world - in this case, a modern and male one. The novel's probing of contemporary gender roles, male violence, Canadian nationalism and environmentalism are occasionally heavy-handed, but it always remains an extended metaphor rather than descending into a simplistic moral fable. What pulls it through is the credibility of the narrator's emotional experience as she descends deeper into her own past and her own psyche, all keenly articulated by Atwood with typically understated finesse. Like most of Atwood's fiction, "Surfacing" is a masterful balance of gripping plot, engaging ideas, and mesmerizing literary artifice.
Rating:
Summary: Turn your analytical brain off and enjoy this
Review: Average of Three STARS? That is an indication that some reviewers don't 'get' this book. This book, one of Atwood's earlier works, was written with a great deal of metaphor symbolism etched so skillfully into the content of the book, you may not realize that until you've reached the end, and have an "aha" experience, in some ways similar (though without the visual shock effect) to the way I felt at the end of watching Sixth Sense (the movie). If you like Margaret Atwood, you will greatly enjoy seeing her young mind at work, as she shows us the unraveling mind of a young woman looking for something in the Canadian woods one week-end. This book is effective and touching if you can move with it - but it isn't a linear-read. The missing plot and underdeveloped characters are not missing or underdeveloped at all -- read without that analytical side of the brain, and the treasures will 'surface'. Undo expectations and flow emotionally with it -- you won't be disappointed. (my original paperback version has $1.50 marked on it!). The original version is falling apart, and I wanted to own another - glad to see it is still here (oh, my but look at the price now!)
Rating:
Summary: Reunited with the personal self
Review: For me the essence of this novel is the journey undertaken by a young woman as she returns to her inner self. Coming home to the island wilderness of her youth in Quebec in search of her missing father, the young artist is accompanied by her lover and a vacuous married couple. All are her recent acquaintances in a life where she has buried many painful experiences subconsiously. Her true self begins to emerge as the remembered becomes familiar and compelling. She finds herself on a solitary journey and the people with her are an impediment to her awakening. She disappears from sight when they leave the island, confidant that she carries a pure new life from her companion-lover, Joe. Now, she is finished with him. Layer by layer, she begins to cleanse her psyche, finally uncovering the woman essential to the nurturing of her unborn child. There are multi-levels of awareness in this novel: progress, pollution, man's encroachment upon nature. Margaret Atwood offers much food for thought. But this book may not be for everyone. It doesn't seem at first as sophisticated as Atwood's later works. I find myself returning again and again to SURFACING, as if each time I am able to wear the skin of the young woman's discovery, surfacing myself.
Rating:
Summary: Dark Surfacing
Review: Having read most of Margaret Atwood's works of fiction, I have to say that Surfacing is probably the darkest of any I have read by her -- including the Handmaid's Tale. Atwood has an uncanny ability to make normal things have a very macabre meaning. Surfacing is probably the book where she best uses her gift of extended metaphor. Her writing style in this book is even more free-flowing than is typical for Atwood. While Surfacing is one of Atwood's shorter novels, this story of a young woman realizing and dealing with her mental paralysis, is fantastic.
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