Product Description

A young woman returns to northern Quebec to the remote island of her childhood, with her lover and two friends, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her father. Flooded with memories, she begins to realise that going home means entering not only another place but another time. As the wild island exerts its elemental hold and she is submerged in the language of the wilderness, she sees that what she is really looking for is her own past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61336 in Books
• Published on: 1994-07-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
'One of the most important novels of the twentieth century...utterly remarkable' NEW YORK TIMES 'Utterly absorbing and satisfying' SUNDAY TIMES 'A deep understanding of human behaviour' MARILYN FRENCH

NEW YORK TIMES
'One of the most important novels of the twentieth century...utterly remarkable'

Global Adventure
A powerful book that will have you thinking about its themes and meanings long after you’ve finished reading it.

Customer Reviews

Slow and powerful.
The story of a Canadian woman, newly divorced and returning to her family home to explore her past and future isn't the first thing I'd run to read. However, I'm very glad I acquired this book and read it cover to cover. I found the beginning of the story slow and confusing - it felt to me as though the first three chapters that another author might include, had been chopped away to land the reader straight away at the point of important story flow.

As I read on I found myself slightly exasperated at the pace, and the bewilderment I felt, trying to work everything out at once. This may well say more about me as a reader than the book, though! But by the end I was completely hooked and reread the last few pages because it was SUCH a satisfying ending. It's not especially neat - you won't be told what the characters will be doing for the next two hundred years. But that's not the style of this anyway - and I don't care to know! The plot for the 'heroine' was sufficiently resolved and I came away from this book calm, impressed and ready to read some of Atwood's other books which previously I've sidled round as "a bit hard". Well-worth the time spent on reading.

The Absorbing Depths of Surfacing
A first-person narrative of a woman diseffected by the casual destructive savagery of humanity, Surfacing is essential and thought-provoking reading, though probably too subtle and bleak to find itself listed among Atwood's more famous and popular novels.
In flight from the dreary confines of human conventions and institutions, the protagonist is slowly 'becoming-animal' as she becomes enchanted with the natural order of the wild. It is a narrative that would appeal to any fans of Angela Carter's lycanthrope (werewolf) stories, as Atwood attempts to express the appeal of being beast (of feeling properly alive) rather than merely subsisting, dulled & compromised, in the hollow roles society offers us.
The narrative is vivid, politics and personalities are easily familiar to us - though they are never one-dimensional or stereotypical - which is important because we are meant to empathise with how the protagonist becomes estranged from her companions as well as civilisation.* They are to read her 'sortie' as her going mad, we are to understand the reasons for her outlook and for her breakdown and withdrawl into the wilderness.

This is an accessible but serious novel you'd probably want to purchase for someone who has already read one or two of the more celebrated Atwood titles - but in time it will stand out as one of the most evocative and satisfying...

(* Note: this isn't in any way to imply that 'Surfacing' is somehow a cross between 'The Good Life' and 'Grizzly Adams'!!)

A powerful quest for identity
Surfacing is the powerful quest of the anonymous protagonist for identity. You will not be able to put this book down!
Atwood's female protagonist returns to her childhood home to search for her missing father, but embarks on a turbulent journey of self - discovery. Atwood's novel is full of powerful symbolism and is a compulsive page - turner. A must read postcolonial women's text!