Surfacing: Margaret Atwood

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I just want to start by saying that I've read some strange books, but this one's definitely up there. There's only one thing I'm sure about, and that's that the writing is gorgeous. This is my first Atwood novel, and I will definitely be reading more. Beyond that, I'm not really sure what happened.

Paul’s wife is referred to as “Madame” in the story. She was somewhat friendly with the narrator’s mother since their husbands were friends. However, since the narrator’s mother was an English speaker and Madame was a French speaker, the language barrier seems to have prevented a close friendship. The Narrator's Father It was before I was born but I can remember it as clearly as if I saw it, and perhaps I did see it: I believe that an unborn baby has its eyes open and can look out through the walls of the mother's stomach, like a frog in a jar. David is the husband of Anna and the person in the group that suggests they stay longer on the island, rather than only going for the day. He works in adult education teaching a communications class and is also working on a film he calls Random Samples. He likes to brag about his artistic endeavor, but doesn’t actually show much talent or deep thought. He is also extremely anti-American. Here are some of my favourite bits - spoilers because they mark essential revelations (I would call them plot points, but let's face it, plot is a little too generous a concept). These mark the most Atwoodian use of language: poetic and suggestive, more than descriptive or concrete. They rely on the reader having read carefully to that point; and then they deliver with a gut-punch of comprehension that belies the abstract, disembodied words and images themselves. Read these at the risk of potentially dulling their impact if you're going to read or re-read this novel: A character who never appears in person. The narrator’s brother fled from his parents years before the novel takes place. The narrator finds it difficult to imagine him as an adult. He nearly drowned as a child, and the narrator constantly reflects on the image of his drowning. He was loving toward his sister, but he had a rather dark childhood. He kept a laboratory on the island, running experiments on animals in jars. The “Fake Husband”The narrator and protagonist of the novel, her name is never actually revealed. A woman in her 20s-30s, she works as a freelance artist and is illustrating a children’s book during the course of the novel. She is stoic and guarded, not often showing her emotions openly. She grew up on an island in a remote area of Québec with her mother, father, and older brother. As English speakers, they were further separated from the French-speaking townspeople and the family lived an isolated existence. A young boy working at a generic bar attached to a new motel in the village. Claude gives fishing licenses to David and to other tourists and also guides American tourists on fishing expeditions. He speaks in a yokel dialect. Evans She struggles with society’s expectations of women and femininity and lives unmarried with her boyfriend Joe. She tells us she abandoned her child with her ex-husband but this is later revealed to be a delusion. The truth is that she had an unwanted abortion after being convinced by her lover, an already married man with a family. Her false memories have been a way for her to cope with the pain in her past. Atwood's previous novel, The Edible Woman, dealt with a young woman who is so terrified of marriage that it causes her to lose her touch with reality and fall deeper and deeper into mental illness. It was a good novel but its biggest weakness was its plot. In Surfacing, Atwood treads much of the same ground but completely jettisons any semblance of a plot and thus presents us with a far more intriguing and mature work.

Separation is a major theme of Surfacing. This is established in the first chapter, when the narrator is shown to be politically dispossessed as an English-speaker in Quebec, at a time in which Quebec was aspiring to become an independent French-speaking nation. [3] The narrator also feels disconnected from the people around her, equating human interaction with that of animals. For example, while overhearing David and Anna have sex, the narrator thinks "of an animal at the moment the trap closes". [4] During her time on the island, the narrator also works at her career as a freelance illustrator, currently creating artwork for a book of fairy tales, although she is too preoccupied with her father’s disappearance to focus properly. As the novel progresses, we begin to uncover more about David and Anna, observing their tumultuous relationship. David is often insulting to Anna and tells her what to do, such as demanding she wears makeup. The narrator describes how he is a womanizer and how it makes her uncomfortable to see Anna treated in that way. The narrator believes her parents would not have approved of her life after she left home. Frequently, she recalls scenes from her marriage and divorce, and she slowly begins to admit to herself that much of what she wants to imagine about her recent years is false. There was no wedding; the scene she has in her memory is actually of the time her already married lover sent her to have an abortion. What her current lover, Joe, admires as her calmness she considers her numbness, an inability to feel. He's got this little set of rules. If I break one of them, I get punished, except he keeps changing them so I am never sure."

She thinks of how she had a good childhood and was not aware of what was going on with WWII and the Holocaust (but her brother told her later). Now she walks through the familiar village and waits for nostalgia to hit. There are more boats than cars parked, which means it is a bad season.

I can see how some people wouldn't like this kind of book: there's not much action, and it is extremely introspective, a hashing out of memories the reader can easily loose their way into. The immersive narrative puts you in the middle of this woman's inner monologue and that can get unnerving, but I enjoyed it. Atwood's prose is evocative enough to make you feel like the story is happening to you and if you don't mind feeling slightly uncomfortable at time, it's a fascinating experience. David's wife and the narrator's friend, Anna seems to normalize abuse in a marriage. At first, the narrator idealizes Anna's role as a wife, but the narrator soon realizes their marriage is not one to envy. Anna's resignation to David's emotional and sometimes physical abuse makes the narrator apprehensive of the idea of marriage. Paul The others are surprised by the remoteness of this place but it is not weird to the narrator. She looks around for something like a note or a will but there is nothing; it does not seem like a house that has been lived in. She lights a fire and grabs a knife to go to the garden. A stern man who disappears, forcing the narrator to search for him on his island. The narrator’s father is an atheist and a fan of the eighteenth-century rationalists. Self-reliant and rugged, he built the cabin on his own and had used the island as respite from city life. He dies accidentally on a trip researching local Indian wall paintings. The Narrator’s BrotherAnna often feels victimized by David, who is condescending and bullying towards her, and they have both had extramarital affairs. She must adhere to David’s rules, such as always wearing makeup and having him treat her like an idiot or a child. Yet despite all this, Anna still takes David’s side throughout the story and cannot fathom actually leaving him. She in turn is condescending toward the narrator during their trip, tarnishing their friendship. David He is the son of the owner of the village motel and bar. In addition to helping his father run the bar, he works as a fishing guide. Malmstrom Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. The Barometer