One of November’s reading events is MARM (Margaret Atwood reading month) which I have enjoyed joining in with before. For months my intention had been to finally read MaddAddam the third book in the trilogy of the same name, and to re-read Cat’s Eye which I read many years ago but can’t remember too much about. Both those are fairly chunky, and I am still reading fairly slowly, so I had a re-think. I decided to re-read Surfacing – which I remembered absolutely nothing about and would also count towards novellas in November.
This is a beautifully written short novel – there is a subtle complexity in the narrative – and several layers to be explored. There is a lot that is metaphorical and a good deal of introspection as the narrator explores her past and present self, and her past and present relationships. This is a novel about human behaviour, identity, personal and national, grief, loss and memory.
Surfacing was Margaret Atwood’s second novel published in 1973, a young unnamed divorcee returns to the remote Quebec island of her childhood to look into the disappearance of her father. She is travelling with her lover Joe, and another couple, David and Anna. David and Joe have been making an odd sort of film during the journey, filming anything that takes their fancy on a rented camera – the film is to be called Random Samples – because that is essentially what it is.
Our narrator left the rural community where she grew up, to live a different kind of life. Her childhood home was a remote place on the side of a lake where she remembers her father taking the boat out on to the water, going off on expeditions with his friend Paul who lives nearby still, her mother invariably ill. This is the place where her brother almost drowned once. She had left, married, and never returned – her parents never knew about the divorce – she never told them the truth about her marriage or why it ended – she had sent them a postcard once and that was that. She had felt unable to return, unable to explain.
“They never knew, about that or why I left. Their own innocence, the reason I couldn’t tell them; perilous innocence, closing them in glass, their artificial garden, greenhouse. They didn’t teach us about evil, they didn’t understand about it, how could I describe it to them? They were from another age, prehistoric, when everyone got married and had a family, children growing in the yard like sunflowers; remote as Eskimoes or mastodons.”
Now her mother is dead, and her father appears to have vanished from his lake side cabin. Contacted by her father’s old friend Paul – she has come to try and find out what happened but has no intention of seeing her father if he should show up.
Now returning to the place where she grew up, she is overwhelmed by memories, glimpses of her mother sat on the sofa in the cabin by the lake – which after several years away looks smaller than it once did. She and Joe, David and Anna – opt to stay in the cabin, the men decide they should stay the week – enjoy the lake while they have the chance. The women undertake the domestic tasks, Anna we learn tries never to appear before her husband without make up on. There is a lot of feminist themes here, ideas of gender and identity explored by Atwood in her portrayal of these two couples. The lake is an important metaphor for all that is going on beneath – those memories that immediately start to surface – those things that lie hidden away unseen. The lake dominates the landscape here and the story.
“I learned about religion the way most children then learned about sex, not in the gutter but in the gravel and cement schoolyard, during the winter months of real school. They would cluster in groups, holding each others’ mittened hands and whispering. They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did and I retaliated by explaining where babies came from. Some of their mothers phoned mine to complain, though I think I was more upset than they were: they didn’t believe me but I believed them.”
Gradually we come to see that all is not well in either of these relationships, Anna and David’s apparent married idyl – hiding a really problematic, disturbing relationship. Our narrator is not happy, she is clearly psychologically scarred by things that happened in the time before she returned to the island. She and Joe want different things, and he seems unable or unwilling to see things from her point of view, and there is still so many things she has not talked about to him. She is a classic unreliable narrator – as the novel progresses we wonder how much of her perspective we can really trust.
“I leafed through all the men I had known to see whether or not I hated them. But then I realized it wasn’t the men I hated, it was the Americans, the human beings, men and women both. They’d had their chance but they had turned against the gods, and it was time for me to choose sides. I wanted there to be a machine that could make them vanish, a button I could press that would evaporate them without disturbing anything else, that way there would be more room for the animals, they would be rescued.”
There is quite a strong anti-American vibe throughout the novel – our narrator sees the Americans that come to the area as a disease – she wants nothing to do with them. This seems to be some sort of paranoia – as gradually we begin to see this fragile young woman’s mental state deteriorate – the narrative becomes more fractured.
I thoroughly enjoyed this re-read- and at the same time understand why after about thirty years I had remembered nothing about it. It was like reading it for the first time, which was a treat – as reading Margaret Atwood almost always is.
I read this in my teens and I remember liking it but also finding it confusing – I think I was probably a bit too young for it. I should follow your example and try a re-read, I think I’d get a lot more out of it now.
Yes, I suspect I may have been a bit young too. I don’t think I was so used to reading novels with such introspection and metaphorical content in those days. So glad I decided to re-read it.
Like you and Madame Bibi, I read this quite some time ago. It does sound like the kind of novel that that would benefit from rereading.
Definitely a novel that benefits from re-reading.
It’s been so long since I read this, I’m sure I’d love it all over again if I gave it a reread!
I think you would probably love it if you re-read it. It’s a novel that benefits from re-reading.
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Lovely post Ali! Like you I haven’t read this in decades and so I remember nothing – which almost makes the re-read like a brand new book! I’m keen to revisit Atwood’s early work, particularly as like Madame B I suspect I would read it very differently and get a lot more out of it.
Oh yes, I don’t think I must have got so much from it the first time I read it, probably why I didn’t remember it.
Thanks for this lovely review, which reminds me how much I enjoyed this book many years ago. I’d say that the anti-American sentiments were very much of the time; in the ‘70s, Canada was being increasingly exposed to American culture and values, with a resulting sense of anxiety about the existence of a distinctly Canadian identity. As you say, though, this is given something of a paranoid construction in the narrator’s mind, and Atwood is characteristically sharp in showing how this attempt to blame all the problems of the world on another group of people is fundamentally flawed.
Ah yes, I did wonder whether the anti-American tone was particular to the time. Atwood is so deft at exploring the complex natures of her characters.
I probably ought to give Atwood another try at some point – not now when everything is so chaotic but some time in the future when things are somewhat less stressful. She’s an author whose books I admire rather than love, if that makes sense. Nevertheless, your thoughtful commentary on this gives me pause. Human behaviour, identity, personal and national, grief, loss, memory – these are all themes I tend to enjoy in a novel, so she should be my thing…
Definitely give her another try one day, I think her earlier novels (pre 1990s) are a bit different to her later novels. Though I have loved lots of her later stuff and her short stories are fabulous.
It’s been a few years since I’ve read Margaret Atwood and exploring her poetry particularly appeals to me right now. A lovely post about a wonderful book. There are times when I can sympathize with the ‘press the button’ sentiments.
Oddly enough although I love Margaret Atwood I never have explored her poetry, that’s something I really should remedy.
I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of this novel, but now I definitely want to read it. Thanks for this review.
Probably because it’s an early one it gets overlooked. I hope you enjoy it if you ever read it.
I have this but for some reason, although I love Atwood, I’ve never read it – but you’ve made me want to.
Ooh good, glad you like the sound of it.
I had no idea MARM was a thing. Love it.
I just started doing Mondays with Margaret which a series on my Book Tube channel.
Thanks for this.
I love the idea of Margaret on Mondays.
I have an off and on relationship with Margaret Atwood, for everyone I’ve loved the next has left me flat. I haven’t read any for years though and I wonder if, like others, I was actually just a bit young to really get them. The themes you highlight especially of personal and social identity are ones I enjoy exploring and the setting sounds idyllic, so may be it’s time to pick her up again!
I suppose there is some variety to her novels. So, I am you could find another that you would like, so glad you like the sound of this one.
I’m joining the chorus here as I too read this years and years ago and don’t remember it / probably didn’t understand it! Well worth a re-read!
Definitely worth a re-read.
[…] Surfacing – Margaret Atwood (1973) – Ali Hope at Heavenali opted to read this “beautifully written” book for Margaret Atwood Reading Month. She discovered “a subtle complexity” to this detective novel cum psychological thriller, with “several layers to be explored”. Ultimately, she says, it is a story “about human behaviour, identity, […] grief, loss and memory.” […]
What a great review of this book – parts of it are even coming back to me! It’s definitely on my list for a re-read sometime – it’s been many years since I read it.
I highly recommend re-reading it, I got so much more from it this time than I could possibly have got last time.
Good to know! 🙂
You’ve perfectly described how I felt, myself, returning to this book years after having read it for the first time (also when, likely, too young to understand some of what she was all about and aiming to do with the story). I’m so glad you enjoyed your reread, and you’ve obviously brought much-needed attention to this slim work, based on the comments/interest above! Nat, above, has already commented on one aspect of the climate here in Canada in that time period; MA was active, with a number of other creatives and intellectuals, in working to promote a distinct literary milieu, independent of American arts and culture. Even when I was young, when an aunt was living and working in the U.S. (and quite happily so!), everyone else in the family made a point of gifting her music and books that were from north of the border because she would never have heard of any of those artists otherwise (simply and naturally eclipsed in her new world). Perhaps something similar to the Ireland/English matter, but with a much younger settler culture lacking a deeply rooted identity?
That aspect of the cultural climate between the US and Canada at this period is interesting. As for the UK and Ireland, really so complex and far reaching. I so enjoyed my re-read, and was glad to have the opportunity.
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