Surfacing (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Margaret Atwood
- First Published: 1972
- Type of Work: Psychological symbolism
- Time of Work: The late 1960’s
- Setting: A small, wilderness lake, probably near the Quebec-Ontario border
- Principal Characters: The narrator and Protagonist, Joe, Anna, David
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: 1960’s, 1970’s, Family or family life, Self-discovery, Memory, Parents and children, Nature, Marriage, Guilt, Pregnancy, Fathers, Islands, Death or dying, Missing persons, Abortion, Canada or Canadians, Modernization, Pollution, Lakes
- Locales: Islands, Quebec, Canada
The Novel
Surfacing is the story of a young woman’s search for her lost father in the Canadian wilderness. As narrated by the daughter herself, the search soon takes on symbolic significance as a quest for self-discovery which will lead her to a wiser understanding of the childhood paradise she believes she has betrayed.
The novel opens with the narrator and her three friends on their way to the island where she and her family once spent their summers. The father, a botanist, lived alone in their lakefront cabin as a “voluntary recluse” following his wife’s...
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