Book Summary

Part detective novel, part psychological thriller, Surfacing is the story of a talented woman artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec. Setting out with her lover and another young couple, she soon finds herself captivated by the isolated setting, where a marriage begins to fall apart, violence and death lurk just below the surface, and sex becomes a catalyst for conflict and dangerous choices. Surfacing is a work permeated with an aura of suspense. complex with layered meanings, and written in brilliant, diamond-sharp prose. Here is a rich mine of ideas from an extraordinary writer about contemporary life and nature, families and marriage, and about women fragmented...and becoming whole.

Review

As a veteran Margaret Atwood fan, I entered into this novel, one of her earliest writings, with a multitude of extremely high expectations. There must be incredibly well-written portrayals of dysfunctional relationships, both familial and romantic. There must be disturbing and dark elements, fragmented identities, complex female characters, and at least one completely shocking revelation by the last chapter. I expected to close the last page, deeply haunted by some newly acquired knowledge of my own emotional landscape. Four years when I first discovered Atwood through her famous dystopian work, A Handmaid's Tale, her words challenged me and changed me. Every Atwood piece since then has held to the same standards. Surfacing did not disappoint.

The cover of the novel says it all- the lower half of a woman breaks through the surface of what appears to be a lake, but as you look closer at the bottom, it begins to look like the sky. Atwood confronts the reader with a fragmented protagonist, recognizable and surprising, ostensibly sensible and ultimately surreal.Upon learning of her estranged father's disappearance, she returns to her old home with her new boyfriend and their married friends. Slowly remembering the past and piecing together the present, the narrator weaves a compelling tale of finding and losing identity and of surviving the continual process and performance of living in the world today.

Atwood takes her readers deep into the dark corners of the human psyche, fearlessly exploring and illuminating realities most author shrink from. She effortlessly navigates convoluted commentaries on the modern world, pointing out truths we never knew we already knew. Although penned over four decades ago, Atwood's words still ring clear and true to the world today. The violence smoldering underneath the surface of her isolated Canadian lakes resonate with concrete cities and suburban backyards alike. And perhaps most importantly, it resonates in the subconsciousness of anyone who's ever felt fragmented, scattered or broken and anyone who has ever found a way to heal again.

Reviewed by Miranda Wojciechowski

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 3/28/1998
Pages: 199

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Book Summary
Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey- with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake- through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city- until powerful corperations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

Review
At once a story of apocalyptic endings and healing beginnings, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake reads like a glimpse into a shattered mirror. The reader inhabits the troubled consciousness of Snowman/Jimmy, as he wanders through the empty wasteland of a world purged of humanity after the rapid spread of a contagious and fatal disease. Juxtaposing a dystopic future with an equally unfamiliar dystopic past, Atwood strands the disoriented reader in medias res, scattering fragments of contextualizing information like breadcrumbs for readers to follow and establish their bearings as they navigate their way through the many overlapping narratives.

The book opens with a portrait of the seemingly sole human survivor, Snowman, living in the midst of a new genetically engineered race called the Children of Crake. Naked, innocent, and animalistic, the Children of Crake rely on Snowman to protect them and explain their existence. Snowman, a self-appointed prophet, constructs wild tales seeped in recognizable religious rhetoric, painting Crake as both benevolent God and original creator. Yet, as the stories unravel alongside Snowman's memories, both the reader and Snowman himself begin to question the truth, acquiring a haunting and sinister feeling that neither narrative is quite as it appears.

As he searches for answers in the abandoned buildings and corpses scattered along his path, Snowman's self-created alter ego begins to bleed into his memories of a previous time and a previous self named Jimmy. Jimmy, hailing from a past still decades into our future, already inhabits a world in which casual genetic engineering over-runs almost every aspect of life, and cities have become inescapable compounds sealed off from the rest of the world. Disturbing reality television shows reminiscent of The Hunger Games abound alongside anti-aging products with horrifying and unadvertised side effects. As remnants of this past trickle into his present, and both progress toward a shocking conclusion. Jimmy attempts to come to terms with his mother's abandonment, his friendship with Crake, and his love affair with Oryx.

As usual, Margaret Atwood delivers a uniquely horrifying vision of the future, comparable with the worlds created by George Orwell's 1984 and H.G Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. Yet, like most dystopic novels, the true horror of this story lies in its haunting resonance with the present, merely exaggerated to its logical and seemingly inevitable end. Atwood takes the reader's desire for a utopic world free from age, disease, and even the polarizing force of love, and subverts them by raising profound questions about what it means to be human.

Ultimately suggesting that our mortality and our fallibility are essential to our humanity, Atwood paradoxically gives us hope for the future by revealing its potential bleakness. Well-written, insightful, and suspenseful, Oryx and Crake is a worthwhile and fascinating read, a promising first installment in a trilogy that leaves you wanting more.

Reviewed by Miranda Wojciechowski