I don't know what to say about this book other than that I found it beautiful. Margaret Atwood knows people, and all their messed-up ways; the ones in here are often annoying, but always people you know-- probably because you could become them very easily. Or at least that's what you fear. How do we become complicit in terrible things? One of many questions Atwood tackles here, though on a much smaller scale than in The Handmaid's Tale. I could read her all day; every sentence is a gem.

I have been trying to get a hold of more of Atwood's books, as I really enjoyed The Blind Assassin, The Handmaid's Tale and The Edible Woman. This one did not grab me as much, it is very dark in comparison to some of her others. X returns to her childhood home in a remote area of Canada after receiving notice that her father has gone missing. She goes with her boyfriend and 2 other friends. She hasn't had much contact with her family since she's left, and also she has left behind a husband and a child. A tough book at times, but a voyage of discovery for her unnamed main character. ( )

It's been a very long time since I read this, but I loved it, as I love all her earlier works. It's first on my reread list! The problem is the 180 to-read books on my list. ( )

Abortion, divorce, environmentalism, Canadian-American relationships, sexism – oh my! This list of difficult issues is tackled in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, which is about a woman who searches for her lost father in northern Quebec, along with her boyfriend (Joe) and a married couple (David and Anna). These subjects may seem a bit overwhelming for one novel, but Surfacing handles these issues (and more) very well. The unnamed narrator is deeply affected by these problems of twentieth-century society, and the novel’s messages are not lost on a twenty-first century reader.
I don’t know how good of a strategy this is, but when I read novels, I like to be able to say to myself that ‘character X is a good/bad person’. I just find that the characters are typically more memorable when I can label them according to how their morals and intentions compare to my values. It was easy for me to do this with characters like David (who I found despicable, yet entertaining), and Anna (who I felt sorry for, while I also wanted to knock some sense into her). The reader feels like he or she knows where David and Anna are coming from, even though the novel is a first-person narrative.
On the other hand, Atwood skilfully kept Joe, and his relationship with the narrator, a little mysterious. Joe’s intentions were never clear, and the narrator kept waiting for him to physically hurt her, but he never did. Although such vagueness about an important character would normally annoy me, I enjoyed the vagueness of Joe. The first-person narration means that every insight about Joe depicts the narrator’s numbness to love. Atwood uses Joe as a vehicle for the reader to learn about the narrator, and Joe never really becomes more than ‘the narrator’s boyfriend’, but he does play a major role in the narrator’s transformation.
One aspect of the novel that I thought was very interesting was the Canadian view of Americans. Atwood seems to have grasped the love/hate relationship that Canadians feel towards our neighbours to the south. With the huge differences in population size, it is understandable that Canadians feel threatened by American society, and are therefore critical of it. In Surfacing, Americans are represented as polluting, careless killers who will do anything to get what they want: “Are the Americans worse than Hitler?” (129). David is especially vocal about his distaste for Americans, calling them things like “rotten capitalist bastards” (12). But, the irony in David’s character is how much he is actually like the Americans he hates so much. Besides the fact that he loves baseball (the American past-time), he seems to treat his wife Anna the same way the Americans abuse the Canadian environment; they take advantage of it for their own leisure without regard for the damage they are causing.
Many people would probably call Surfacing a feminist novel, but I think that Atwood gets even deeper than that. She seems to be commenting on what it means to be human, not just a female human. This comes from the narrator’s understanding of nature, which I would say is the main reason to read this novel. The narrator does not accept the roles for women in society, but she does not seem to accept society in general, either. Having grown up in northern Quebec, the narrator connects to the natural world better than any city or suburban person ever can. It is this connection that makes her critical of people’s place in the world, which is seen in her views on animals, surviving in the woods, and environmental exploitation. The narrator’s insight may make you want to pack just the essentials, and head off into the wilderness!
Overall, Surfacing is a psychological exploration of a woman’s search for her place in the world. While the serious issues in this novel are not too heavy, they will make the reader go into deep thought about the major problems presented. I have heard that Atwood’s newer works are much better than her earlier stuff. I don’t know if that means people typically do not enjoy Surfacing or they just really love her later works, but in my case, I know I will definitely be checking out more titles by Atwood since I really enjoyed Surfacing. How could her writing get better? ( )

Well, my favourite authors have been disappointing me lately. First, I was underwhelmed by McEwan's Amsterdam, and now I am dissatisfied with Atwood's Surfacing. I have heard from other that Atwood fans tend to favour either her earlier works or her later works, and I guess I fall under the latter category. Surfacing is Atwood's second novel, and while well-written, I feel as though she left a lot of potential territory unexplored.

Surfacing is narrated by an unnamed women in her twenties, who journeys to her childhood home. Her father is missing, last seen in his cabin on an island in northern Quebec. Along with her boy-friend and another couple, the narrator attempts to find clues to her father's whereabouts, while spending a few days fishing the lakes around the cabin.

This book was written in 1972, the same year that Atwood wrote Survival, a book of literary criticism exploring Canadian Literature. Atwood claimed that while the central thematic symbol of British Literature would be the island, and that of American Literature is the frontier, Canadian Literature is defined by survival. Atwood saw characters in Canadian Lit as having to fight for their lives, as needing to survive other human beings, the natural world, or their own inner turmoil. Character against Nature is particularly prevalent in Can Lit, especially in the Modern period, of about 1940-1970. This struggle is often a metaphor for the character's struggle with his or herself, with Nature standing in the place of impending madness. Atwood's own poetry from this period demonstrates this theme, particularly her poems about Susanna Moodie, and "Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer." Since 1972, Atwood's theories have fallen a little out of favour - her book, IMHO, makes sense for its time, but not really for present-day writing.

Surfacing clearly echoes a lot of what Atwood discusses in Survival - and hey, if you are going to define Canadian Literature, and then write a Canadian novel, I guess your novel should follow your own definition, right? So, as Atwood's narrator spends more time in the bush, her mental state begins to decline. The reader sees hints of instability throughout the novel, but the climax really highlights the connection between Nature and Madness. The narrator's thoughts become disconnected, and are often only partial sentences or images. Atwood skillfully traces the narrator's downward spiral, and the reader feels pulled down along with her.

However, at only 195 pages, Surfacing is not all that it could be. Contemporary Atwood novels are long, meaty narratives, and better demonstrate this author's considerable skill. The ending felt rushed and inconclusive - and, while I am not opposed to endings that leave the reader with unanswered questions, I felt that this ending did not do justice to the subject matter. Insanity is a complex state, and if an author decides to tackle this topic, then he or she had better confront it head on, delve deep, and take some risks - which Atwood does in her later novel, Alias Grace. Surfacing definitely has potential, but it is one of those stories that should have been 400 pages, not 200.

Again, this is only Atwood's second novel, and the reader can see glimpses of the author of masterpieces like Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin. It is always interesting to see an author's development over a body of work, but Surfacing unquestionably places me as a fan of Atwood's later novels. ( )