Surfacing (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Margaret Atwood
- First Published: 1972
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social criticism
- Time of Work: About 1970
- Setting: An island in northern Quebec
- Principal Characters: The narrator, Joe, Anna, David, The narrator’s father, The narrator’s mother, The narrator’s brother
- 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
Form and Content
The story of Surfacing covers nine days that the four younger people—the narrator, Joe, Anna, and David—spend on the island that had been the narrator’s childhood home and several more days when she is there alone. Though the unnamed narrator is attempting to find explanations for her father’s mysterious disappearance, the others treat it more as a vacation, filming quaint Quebec oddities during the trip and their own outdoorsy exploits on the island. They expect the narrator to entertain them by taking them fishing and blueberry picking.
...[The entire page is 2359 words long]
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