Rating: 
Summary: Rising from obscurity
Review: In Margaret Atwood's 1972 novel, a young woman returns to the remote island in Quebec where she grew up. Her father has disappeared and she brings two friends (a married couple) and her estranged boyfriend to search for him. Over the course of a week, they search for traces of him while the narrator uncovers suppressed pieces of her past. The marriage between her friends begins to erode as their supplies dwindle and American tourists invade the pristine landscape.
This is a strange and thought-provoking little book. Rife with symbolism, Surfacing explores the feelings of an adult returning to the places of her childhood and even what it means to become an adult. In it, we can see some of the obscurity that today makes Atwood such an interesting author, but was not, in her earliest novels, developed to the point where we aren't sometimes just left wondering what on earth she's talking about.
Rating: 
Summary: A gripping novel of surrender, unpeeling layers of emotion.
Review: Margaret Atwood can always involve me in her characters, but this one gripped me in the power of this woman's strength, exposed in layers of emotion which peel away until she surrenders to the atavistic, primordial self deep inside, previously locked down by conventionality. She must delve deep into herself, reaching the bottom of both the lake and her psyche, before she can return to her friends: the woman who must always put on a pretty surface, her boyfriend who has never seen anything but the mask, and the protagonists' own boyfriend.
Rating: 
Summary: The boring world of a stereotype
Review: Margaret Atwood is an excellent writer, but this book is not quite it. The characters are too stereotypical and he plot is pretty repetitive. I know Atwood pretended to make a feminist statement, but it isn't accompanied with a good narrative. Probably it is only for femenine or existencialist readers.
Rating:
Summary: What lurks beneath the surface
Review: Margaret Atwood's "Surfacing" is a story about a woman connecting with her childhood, written in the context of her search for her missing father in the wilds of rural Quebec. The narrator, whose name is never revealed, is a commercial artist who lives in the city with her boyfriend Joe and is presently working on illustrations for a children's book. She has been summoned to her native village by a family friend who has reported to her that her father is missing, and, having no car of her own, she has persuaded Joe and her friends David and Anna, a married couple, to give her a ride and make a short summer vacation out of it. Her childhood home, where her widowed father still lives, is a cabin on a wooded island in a lake near the village. The cabin is indeed empty, and the most significant clue she finds about her father's disappearance is a set of strange, indecipherable drawings on paper, apparently sketched by him recently. Did he go mad from self-isolation, or are these drawings a message of something more sinister? The narrator's quest seems to be motivated more by casual curiosity about what could have happened to him than by filial devotion or fear for his safety; she gives the impression of a woman whose capacity for love has been exhausted. As might be expected, the four people on the island become entangled in a web of sexual tension. The narrator, herself divorced and the mother of a child whose fate is never made clear, contemplates her relationship with Joe, a struggling artist like her, who is almost morbidly quiet and becomes sullen when she refuses his request for marriage. Meanwhile, David and Anna's marriage is on a collision course. David, a capitalism-hating hippie who reflects the counterculture of the era in which the novel was written, is an obnoxious, slimy fellow who tries (unsuccessfully) to be funny by imitating cartoon characters yet continually intimidates Anna and makes a pass at the narrator in retribution for Anna's infidelity. Obviously, this is not a man with whom one would want to spend a week at a cabin. Although "Surfacing" has the setup of a mystery novel, I feel obligated to say that anybody who reads it hoping for a conventional mystery will be disappointed. The novel uses a psychologically incisive modernist prose style and the spectral image of the narrator's missing father, whose spirit haunts the beautiful scenery like an invisible entity, silent but somehow watching, to achieve an effect that is ultimately cerebral and ominous. In the narrator's rather abrupt and almost maniacal transformation into a recluse, I was, oddly enough, reminded of Kafka's story "The Burrow," which invokes a similar aura of paranoia; here the narrator is making a final effort to protect herself, now that she no longer can rely on her father's protection, from the harmful effects of the world.
Rating:
Summary: What lurks beneath the surface
Review: Margaret Atwood's "Surfacing" is a story about a woman connecting with her childhood, written in the context of her search for her missing father in the wilds of rural Quebec. The narrator, whose name is never revealed, is a commercial artist who lives in the city with her boyfriend Joe and is presently working on illustrations for a children's book. She has been summoned to her native village by a family friend who has reported to her that her father is missing, and, having no car of her own, she has persuaded Joe and her friends David and Anna, a married couple, to give her a ride and make a short summer vacation out of it. Her childhood home, where her widowed father still lives, is a cabin on a wooded island in a lake near the village. The cabin is indeed empty, and the most significant clue she finds about her father's disappearance is a set of strange, indecipherable drawings on paper, apparently sketched by him recently. Did he go mad from self-isolation, or are these drawings a message of something more sinister? The narrator's quest seems to be motivated more by casual curiosity about what could have happened to him than by filial devotion or fear for his safety; she gives the impression of a woman whose capacity for love has been exhausted. As might be expected, the four people on the island become entangled in a web of sexual tension. The narrator, herself divorced and the mother of a child whose fate is never made clear, contemplates her relationship with Joe, a struggling artist like her, who is almost morbidly quiet and becomes sullen when she refuses his request for marriage. Meanwhile, David and Anna's marriage is on a collision course. David, a capitalism-hating hippie who reflects the counterculture of the era in which the novel was written, is an obnoxious, slimy fellow who tries (unsuccessfully) to be funny by imitating cartoon characters yet continually intimidates Anna and makes a pass at the narrator in retribution for Anna's infidelity. Obviously, this is not a man with whom one would want to spend a week at a cabin. Although "Surfacing" has the setup of a mystery novel, I feel obligated to say that anybody who reads it hoping for a conventional mystery will be disappointed. The novel uses a psychologically incisive modernist prose style and the spectral image of the narrator's missing father, whose spirit haunts the beautiful scenery like an invisible entity, silent but somehow watching, to achieve an effect that is ultimately cerebral and ominous. In the narrator's rather abrupt and almost maniacal transformation into a recluse, I was, oddly enough, reminded of Kafka's story "The Burrow," which invokes a similar aura of paranoia; here the narrator is making a final effort to protect herself, now that she no longer can rely on her father's protection, from the harmful effects of the world.
Rating:
Summary: atwood's surfacing is fabulous!!!
Review: Margaret Atwood's Surfacing was an absolute joy. So good that I read it each year just to re-experience the first time I rushed to the conclusion while reading at the cottage, by candlelight, in the wee hours of the morning. I think it takes someone Canadian to enjoy the experience of the protagonist in search of herself and her orgins in the so-called wilderness. Questioning her reality and determining her calling is a journey that too few of us experience. I enjoyed the trip. The decriptions of the landscape were fabulous and the anti-americanism of the novel is all to real to those forced to deal the imperialism to the south. To those that did not enjoy this book, read it again without any biases and envelop the character wholly.
Rating: 
Summary: "Importance" is relative
Review: Margaret Atwood, Surfacing (Popular Library, 1972)
availability: in print This is a book that wanted to be IMPORTANT. It's full of ideas that are important, anyway. Problem is, the characters therein seem as if they're there in order to advance the ideas, instead of the characters driving the novel and the ideas being introduced incidentally to the characters. This, of course, violates the one supremely inviolable rule of literature: the medium, to borrow slightly inaccurately from Mr. McLuhan, is the message. When the message (the theme) overwhelm the medium (the novel, which at its heart must contain at least some kind of conjunetion of plot and character), the work suffers. It is true of music, it is true of art, but most of all it is true of the novel, for a novel whose main goal is to put forth an idea, rather than to give the reader characters with whom s/he can sympathize, is necessarily doomed to fail. This is not to say that said symapthetic (or antipathetic, certainly) characters cannot advance ideas; sure they can. But for a character to advance an idea in an effective manner, the character MUST be someone that the reader finds believable; otherwise; the novel stops being a novel and becomes a polemic. And that is exactly what we have here: four characters in search of an exit (or, perhaps, an author). None of them is sympathetic; none is well-drawn; none has enough depth to couch the ideas and beliefs that Atwood wants to give them, because their depth lies in those ideas, and it doesn't-- it can't-- work that way. The main thing that kept me reading, was of course, the Deep Dark Secret(TM). The DDS, in this novel, is held by the main character, a collegiate woman who is in a loveless relationship, divorced and drifting, who goes to search for her missing father in the northern Canadian wilderness. She takes along her boyfriend and another couple with whom said boyfriend is making an experimental film. There is much about this, reading the above and placing it in its proper timeline, the commands comparison with Don DeLillo's first novel, Americana, published three years previous. Both detail a piece of time in the career of filmmakers; both are obsessed with nationality and how it is seen by outsiders; both have important ideas about life they wish to convey through their subjects. Reading the two side-by-side cannot help but expose the flaws in Surfacing, as DeLillo succeedson every level where Atwood fails; his characters are rich, sympathetic, rather odd creatures who we can't help but enjoy, from opening scene to final downward spiral (and the fact that we feel guilty for enjoying the various minor disasters so much is part of DeLillo's talent); in Surfacing, we're given ideas first, then characters to drive them. We can't enjoy the main character's descent into madness, but we cannot feel distressed by it, either; it simply is. All that said, the book does have a few redeeming qualities. After an extremely slow beginning, Atwood's writing picks up after the quartet decide to spend a week farther at the remote cabin, and the DDS itself, which comes to us as an onionesque mystery, with layer after layer being peeled off to reveal the rotten center, is quite skillfully handled. In the hands of a more sympathetic character, the climactic scenes of this novel and the quite well-written ending would have been, as the cover blazons, "shattering." Unfortunately, they aren't, and instead they fall flat. Marvel at the technical skill of the mystery construction, because it's the only thing that will keep you reading. If I hadn't heard exclusively wonderful things about some of Atwood's other novels, especially The Handmaid's Tale, this would be my last try, but I'll make another attmept in the hope that she improved with time. * 1/2
Rating:
Summary: Surfacing? Sinking? Or sunk?
Review: On the exterior many lives are impetuously lived, in constant motion, constant flux, demanding change... while on the inside, important wheels have long since stopped turning. Crucial questions languish, not so much from being already answered as from never having been asked. Another type of person floats along fairly steady, and constant diversion is not really an issue... but on the inside, they are a whirligig. Always asking and re-asking, backpedalling, and here in the unseen realm the action is taking place, like a duck's feet underwater.
The nameless protagonist in Atwood's Surfacing is of this latter variety, contemplative and introspective. Together with three friends of the former type of personality (a married couple and her boyfriend Joe), these four drive off into the remote Quebec wilderness for a few days of R & R. This whirligig character however, has a far greater purpose in mind. She is returning here to her childhood home in search of her father who has mysteriously vanished without a trace. While these other three suntan, fish, and bicker, she is on a quest that calls forth a recollection of her entire upbringing and childhood. We sense that if she finds her father at all, it will be in a way that is as surprising to the reader as it will be to herself.
She's a great character. If it wasn't for her the others would seemingly starve to death, seated at the table and surrounded by victuals but unaware of how to prepare lunch. She's the organizer, the fish-filleter, the decision-maker... hourly explaining to her friends what will happen next. She is the individual who surfaces, thinks for herself, and finds an identity within. In stark contrast are her friends who seem to only find sustenance in the pieces they can bite off of each other and ingest.
As in so much of Atwood's work, these men are soon to reveal their inherent nasty dogness. On two occasions Whirligig avoids being (essentially) raped by each of them only by reminding them that it is "the right time" for her to get pregnant. But she is not a heroine without her own foibles. She realizes her own problems, the greatest of which may be her her inability to return the "love" that has been offered her throughout her life. Her detached coldness. But the importance in becoming whole (self-actualized?) may lie right there in this word "realizing", which, in the case of this novel MAY be synonymous with the word "surfacing". Throughout the book a central question seems to repeat itself... what does it mean to love? What if I don't "feel" love when someone says "I love you"? What does it mean to love one's past, one's history? To love your parents, your self... to love your lovers. And what does it mean to withdraw, to UTTERLY withdraw? These are the kind of meaty questions that surface in this book, brilliantly written and permeated with dark symbolism and a misty/ethereal 70's New-Ageyness to it. In Atwoodland, anything and everything can be a talisman.
"It's true, I am by myself; this is what I wanted, to stay here alone. From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are are no longer any rational points of view." Is Whirligig sane or insane on the last page? Surfacing or submerged? The author leaves the verdict in the hands of the reader. I enjoyed reading it, and haven't yet set the gavel down.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing, but not Atwood's best
Review: One of Atwood's earlier novels, Surfacing tells of a (nameless) woman who, hearing that her father has vanished from the remote Quebec island where he lived, goes with three friends to search for him. Raised in a rustic, natural setting outside of conventional society, but by now adjusted to city life, she reverts to her childhood instincts and further, into what will appear to some as madness, to others as an epiphany. Many of the themes explored in Atwood's later works appear here, including autobiographical bits fleshed out, quite chillingly, in Cat's Eye. But unlike such later works, which strike me as far more accessible, Surfacing is so tangled in symbolism, obscure metaphors and near-stream of consciousness passages that it often feels like more trouble to decipher than is warranted by the truths within. I liked this book, but unlike Cat's Eye, The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace, it engaged me only intellectually, not emotionally. The edition I read came with material for college students in the back; it struck me as appropriate, for unlike Atwood's best novels, Surfacing often has the intractable feel of a homework assignment.
Rating:
Summary: GAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: READ THIS NOVEL. This is the only book that I have read recently that should be required reading for the human race. I was first drawn to Atwood by her lilting, poetic descriptions; the beautiful and often enchanting way that she weaves words in to masterpieces... ...But "Surfacing" goes far beyond that. It is intensely psychological, brimming with wise social commentary. Atwood herself once stated that the novel is about the social "machine"-in this world, one is either predator or prey. Destroy, or be destroyed. And those who are alive have obviously-either conciously or subconciously-chosen the former. The question addressed is "why isn't there a third choice?" Another thing that I pulled from the novel, personally, was having to actually accept that we HAVE chosen the former--that we are not the innocents that we would love (and would be easier) to believe. To me, "surfacing," the actual term, represents coming out of some sort of darkness (like the lake in the novel), by claiming your whole being. By accepting the darkness in you, and accepting that you are not innocent; these parts of you which you are not entirely proud of (your shadow)-- Seeing all of yourself, in a different (and more objective) light. So yes--this is probably my favorite novel created. Or at least my favorite contemporary. If read with an open mind, it is definitely a big third-eye-opener. But be forewarned: wonderful as "Surfacing" is, if you are looking for Nora Roberts-like material and such, this is no romance, not even the "part detective thriller..." yada yada yada that it claims to be. It is more like poetry of a sort, introspective; as if Atwood is just throwing it out there, saying "this is me, this is what I want to write, and if you don't like it, don't read it," rather than conforming to an actual format. (If you would prefer a narrator who is more likeable, quirky and sincere, try "Lady Oracle," by Atwood--which is also wonderful.)\ Overall--GAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! BRILLIANCE!!!! Why can't I write like that????
|
