Surfacing

Rating:
Summary: Everything means more than one thing!
Review: This is another one of Atwood's early novels, but is almost the flipside of The Edible Woman. That book showcased her oft neglected sense of humor and used some none too subtle metaphors to drive the point home. Here we have a very somber work that has so many layers of symbolism that English teachers the world over must be drooling over the thought of putting it into their classrooms. In a nutshell, a nameless protagonist takes three friends (a married couple and her boyfriend) out into the Canadian woods to find out where her father and along the way we get heaps of character exploration, to which plot almost seems secondary. Not that this is a bad thing, at her best Atwood dissects people like nobody's business and her character studies reveal simple characters for the complicated people they are layer by layer. Except that doesn't much happen here. Like the later Life Before Man, there are four people here who interact in various ways. Also like Life Before Man, all of these people are either so self absorbed or just plain unlikeable that it's hard to care. Unlike Life Before Man, the book is narrated totally in first person, which means you don't get as much of that car accident feeling from watching all the characters circle each other, which wound up being the most fascinating part of that book. Here it's all filtered through the narrator, which is good and bad. We don't get really great insights into the other characters this way, the one guy is always annoying and a total jerk, he reminds me of On the Road's Dean Moriarty with all the redeeming qualities taken out. The other guy isn't as annoying but then he rarely talks either, so I guess it's a tossup. That leaves the heavy character lifting to the two women, one of which is rather submissive and not too exciting. The other is the narrator herself, who speaks in Atwood's typically brilliant prose, with all its gift for detail and metaphor. The only problem . . . she's not too interesting either since she's cold and distant to everyone in the story and nearly impenetrable to the reader. Atwood, to her credit, does try to find a new spin on "woman repressed by society trying to break free" which leads to a very, very strange section of the book that probably means all kinds of things I'm not smart enough to understand. But in the end, the narrator was so distant that I really couldn't care all that much. Still, Atwood gets points for trying really hard, and I could read her prose all day, she does make beautiful sentences seem quite effortless. My version has a neater cover, with someone in a canoe dissolving, which I think sums up the book very well. All in all, a worthy read and worth your time, but it's not her best. That, alas, was still to come.

Rating:
Summary: The Green Years of Young Margaret
Review: This is one of Atwoods early novels. Written in the seventies it has many of that decades concerns in it: environmentalism, organic reality taking precedence over industrialization. Those big themes are in there but also the much more personal identity quest of the main female character. And her quest also feels like one that could only take place in the seventies as it involves shamanic symbols in her attempt to unify her mothers and fathers or male and female aspects into her own personal identity structure. In that way she is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf who also sought a male/female blend, but a much earthier Woolf, one that came of age in the sixties. The Canada of this book sounds like a very unspoiled virgin world that still evokes those equally unspoiled states of mind that verge on the mystic. Very appealing, strange book. I think perhaps Atwood was attempting to write a distinctly Canadian kind of literature replete with a regional mythology.

Rating:
Summary: Psychological Twists Abound
Review: This novel is definately on the surface, no pun intended, a psychological novel about the fractured mind of a young woman searching for her father in a rural part of Canada. Atwood's metaphors and imagery make this book so much more exciting than just that synopsis. Her main character reverts back to nature as her mind tries to deal with psychological onslaughts from many different factors in her world. The text is challenging, but it is just experimental enough to keep the reader engaged. You'll definately need to reread this one to capture all its subtleties.

Rating:
Summary: a wretched novel
Review: this novel was terible. i heard it was "bell jar" esque, but it was terrible and made me sick due to the lack of interesting plot. i would reccomend it to noone, only massochists.

Rating:
Summary: Hollow characterizations
Review: Though I found this book to contain some haunting and beautiful passages such as "Language divides us into fragments," and "I was not prepared for the average, its needless cruelties and lies," ultimately, the narrator lacked depth. A story led by a woman who is essentially numb makes for a souless read. Rather than coming to dislike or admire her for any solid reason, I felt her to be lifeless, and therefore, I felt little throughout.

Rating:
Summary: . transcending .
Review: With skill comparable to Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood has written a novel that takes a weekend in the life of a woman and turns it into a meditation on life that both sexes should experience. Imagery and characterization have never been stronger than in these pages.