MARGARET ATWOOD’S “SURFACING”: FULL OF POTENTIAL AND HIGHLY POETIC BUT SADLY PRETENTIOUS AND PROBLEMATIC

RATING GUIDE:

 

5 – A keeper!   

4 – Very good

3 –  Passable

2 –  I’d rather read a telephone book

1 – An absolute bomb.  Read at your own risk!

I got hold of Margaret Atwood’s book “Surfacing” from a swap meet with some old friends.  I thought it would be a great read, based on the blurb at the back cover and the glowing reviews about Atwood and the book on the cover and the inside pages.  Well, I’m finally done reading this book, and all I can say is … you really can’t believe everything that you hear or read!

This book is unique in that its lead character, a female, doesn’t have a name.  Well, she must have a name, but for some unknown reason, Atwood chose not to reveal that to us.  The world our unnamed protagonist lives in is Canada (Quebec?) sometime in the early 1970’s.  I wish I knew more about Canadian history to have a better understanding of the story (alas, I don’t).  But the world the heroine is in is clearly facing a time of change.  Traditional institutions and values such as marriage and fidelity are being challenged by the “new” ideas of the seventies, like feminism and open marriages.  Babies aren’t people but pieces of flesh to be aborted, and love is just a euphemism for sex.

This book isn’t your typical book with a clearly defined plot.  It’s a story that’s mostly internal, dealing with a few revelations about the unnamed heroine’s life, but mostly about her observations about the people and things around her, as well as her opinions about certain issues (like abortion, for example).  It is mostly stream-of-consciousness told in hebigat poetic descriptions.  You know, the type that sounds soooo intellectual and soooo profound, your head feels like it wants to explode.  The lines are poetic, no doubt, they sound good read aloud, but whether or not it gives you an idea as to what is REALLY happening in the book … well, that’s the big question!

Our unnamed heroine is forced to revisit her old home in Canada following the disappearance of her father.  She is joined on this trip by her boyfriend Joe and her newfound American friends, David and Anna.  By the time her father is found, our unnamed character has been (unsuccessfully) seduced by David, she has finally decided to have sex with her Joe, after which she loses her mind.

And that, my friends, appears to be the book’s story, more or less.  I can’t really tell for sure because the book was just so damned confusing!

Blame it on the poetry.  It sounds good read aloud, that’s for sure.  It sounds VERY arty, but it’s all over this book that it eclipses everything, including the plot, including the main characters, including the historical elements of the story and the potentially relevant statements it can make about issues such as marriage, feminism, sex and abortion.  And it’s such a shame.

Here’s a passage from page 197 of the book:  “Rump on a packsack, harem cushion, pink on the cheeks and black discreetly around the eyes, as red as blood as black as ebony, a seamed and folded imitation of a magazine picture that is itself an imitation of a woman who is also an imitation, the original nowhere, hairless lobed angle in the same heaven where God is a circle, captive princess in someone’s head.”

Beautiful words, right?  Provocative imagery.  But can anyone tell me what THAT means?  Anybody?

See what I mean?

This was Atwood’s second novel.  My guess is, as with many young writers who are still trying to discover their own voices or build their own writing identities, she was still in the process of experimentation when she wrote this.  Or maybe it was her poetry-writing side that got in the way of her prose-writing side.  Either that or she just let her words take over the entire book.  I’m sure you’ve read books where you’re pretty sure the writer fell in love with his/her beautiful images and phrases that he/she just couldn’t part with them.  Or maybe she was on some hebigat acid trip.  Because man, super-heavy siya man!  ‘Di ko ma-dig! 

As confusing and frustrating as the book was, Atwood still had some very good, thought-provoking points to make about many issues.  About love and sex.  About abortion.  About family.  About alienation.  About relationships.  About men who sleep around.  About women who let their men walk all over them.  About not trusting anyone.  About  society and it’s mistrust of what’s different.  About clashing cultures.  And if I’m right about what I think happened to the character, then Atwood also came up with a very arty, poetic way of showing someone who eventually fell into madness.  Whether that was temporary or not, I’m not sure (like I said, I had no idea where the hell the story was going to go most of the time --- I don’t even know what happened to her missing father!).  But these profound thoughts about these hebigat issues are still important thoughts to ponder, even in this day and age.  And I don’t care if the book is dated.  How dated is it?  Well, when you hear one of the characters say “groovy chick,” you know it is soooo dated.

Based on what I read on the internet, Atwood is one of Canada’s highly respected authors.  Which means her career survived this book, which, despite its beautiful, arty poetic imagery, is … well, a little bit of a lemon.  But I’m open to reading her other books to see what she came up with after this one. 

RATING:  1