Faire surface (1972)

Surfacing by Margaret Atwood (1998)

Ung kona heldur á heimaslóðir á afskekktri eyju í Kanada ásamt manni sínum og vinahjónum. Brátt sækja á hana minningar frá æsku sinni, dularfullu hvarfi föður hennar og óuppgerð mál úr eigin lífi. Í einangrunni á eyjunni stefnir allt í óefni í samskiptum einstaklinganna á sama tíma og sálarflækjur konunnar ágerast þar til upp úr sýður.
Hárbeittur og eftirminnilegur prósi hjá Atwood sem er með betri rithöfundum sem uppi eru í dag. ( )

I was prepared to dash through this short novel but quickly realized I ought to slow down, then slower still, one chapter per day. It is tightly woven like a short story, without the extraneous bits, full of great descriptions ('cow-sprinkled hills ... cuttings dynamited in pink and grey granite'). I'm more familiar with Ontario than Quebec, but I know this backcountry with its lakes and mist, its quiet woods and islands. Atwood fully convinces me that she knows it too.

There are two mysteries in play, the surface action and also a deeper psychological story. A woman's father who lives alone in his island cottage goes mysteriously missing. After being notified, she rounds up her boyfriend and some friends to transport her, so she can look for clues. At the same time, the reader is left to wonder why she's bothering. She displays no particular attachment to her father in her first-person narrative - nor to her boyfriend, or to her shallow friends, nor is she triggered by nostalgia during this trip back to her childhood stomping grounds (it was never her home, she keeps telling us.) She isn't attached to anything, or anyone. References to drowning creep in, to being underwater.

I'm of two minds about stories that delve into different realms of logic where I can't follow, but there's something satisfying in how it's managed here. Before you can surface you must first submerge, to the only place where you can find the answers you seek. ( )

Wow.. I actually found this one quite.. frustrating in parts. Still great, it's just the sentence structure which kept throwing me but that's probably just because I like to read and write very concisely.
Otherwise, great book. I would have loved a bit more info and a couple of scenes to be extended but the mystery kind of makes it more likable in the sense of being intriguing and making you kind of wonder where certain themes and experiences of the character are being pulled from.
It makes me want to get back to nature, oddly enough.. ( )

Five kids were chosen to be the stars of a reality documentary, showing them in their regular lives doing what they do. It’s time for another movie, but Justine isn’t sure she wants to do another one. It’s been five years since the last movie, but now she feels like a disappointment and like she hardly knows most of the other kids who were so important to her early life. The new movie gives them a chance to reunite again, but after years of hurt and having personal things from their lives being shared with strangers, they aren’t very willing to try being friends again. When one of them disappears to go on a journey to find the mother that abandoned her, however, the kids team up again to become friends and realize that sometimes the best way to see themselves is through the eyes of someone else.

The most interesting aspect of the story is not the movie aspect, but the characters. The flashbacks and scenes from the previous movies slowly let the reader know how the characters went from being best friends to not speaking. Each character has their own struggles and challenges, and they all struggle with how to communicate with the friends they used to be so close to. The romance in the end seemed a little bit random, but the gradual progression of each person working through their challenges is interesting. Justine as the narrator was not as likeable as she could have been, but she is appealing as the girl who is the glue of the group and the other characters make up for her shortcomings. While it focuses less on the being famous aspect than someone might be expected from the jacket description, the character interactions are fun to read about. ( )