FABClub (Female Authors Book Club) discussion

Let's discuss Margaret Atwood's second novel Surfacing!

I just started this one, so far it has a very different feel for me from The Edible Woman - although I can see the nature motifs that run through her poetry. Just in the first chapter we appear to have a slightly odd set of mis-fits, who aren't quite at ease with each other, and aren't quite at ease in their setting. I'm interested in seeing where this goes....

I had a hard time getting into this one. The language was very poetic but I found myself not connecting to the characters or the story very much. I didn't feel like there was enough plot, but that may be because I had trouble maintaining my interest enough to read closely. I think if this were a short story, not a novel, I would have loved it.

I had a very odd reaction to this. I was reading it simultaneously with Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. It made Survival more interesting, because I could see the various themes she talks about there playing out here. On the other hand it made this less interesting, because I was focused on the themes rather than the story itself. The whole last bit I just couldn't decide what I thought about it. Seriously reminiscent of The Yellow Wallpaper.

I'm not sure I'm done with it yet; I may need to spend some more time with it.

There is so much death in this! I'm like you Catherine, in that I didn't read it closely enough. And now that I'm looking at it again.... From the very first sentence, "the white birches are dying, the disease is spreading up from the south," presumably along with the Americans, who are spreading up from the south and bringing death with them.

And then this description of Joe: "the defiant but insane look of a species once dominant, now threatened with extinction."

I also noticed a lot of anxiety about marriage and the role of women as wives and mothers in this novel, similar to The Edible Woman. One thing that is great about reading an author's entire work in chronological order is noticing these themes that repeat themselves and evolve.

The way she plays with truth and lies is fascinating! She (and I didn't even realize until the very end of the book that (view spoiler)[the narrator is never named! (hide spoiler)]) is telling this enormous lie to herself, that she appears to completely believe, and then lying about her cover story on top of that!

I think this bit at the very end of Part I (Chapter 8) is really important:
(view spoiler)["That's a lie, my own voice says out loud.... I have to be more careful about my memories. I have to be sure they're my own and not the memories of other people telling me what I felt, how I acted, what I said: if the events are wrong the feelings I remember about them will be wrong too, I'll start inventing them and there will be no way of correcting it." Of course, it turns out that that is exactly what she has done. And then she goes on to mention the "static, like a jumped track." That's our clue that there's something seriously wrong here, but I read right past that the first time. (hide spoiler)]

Is it ironic, or something far worse, that this description from the early 60's could just as well describe an abortion or a birth?

"They shut you into a hospital, they shave the hair off you and tie your hands down and they don't let you see, they don't want you to understand, they want you to believe it's their power, not yours. They stick needles into you so you won't hear anything, you might as well be a dead pig, your legs are up in a metal frame, they bend over you, technicians, mechanics, butchers, students clumsy or snickering practicing on your body, they take the baby out with a fork like a pickle out of a pickle jar. After that they fill your veins up with red plastic."

Either way, there's no choice or bodily integrity being exercised here at all.

Second time around I got so much more out of this! It really helps if you already know what's going on! There's a really appalling relationship pictured here, but the way it sneaks up on you....

I would love to know if anyone has any thoughts on how our narrator here compares to the protagonist in The Edible Woman. Is it possible (or reasonable) to look at them as different facets of the same woman, or perhaps as two different alternative experiences that one woman might have had?

I'm not done yet but I am really enjoying it so far. I just love the way Atwood writes... it poetic, it's complex, it's comical at the right points... she is a master of observing and articulating the tiniest aspects of life and always manages to put to words the thoughts and feelings I have that I think no one else does (ha)

I immediately connected with the setting because the descriptions of the cabin are exactly the same as the cabin my family has. The lack of TV or electricity, the canoeing, the going to bed when it gets dark... it's my childhood. I'm so quintessentially Canadian hahaha

Very curious to see where it's headed.

So, what did you think?