ABSTRACT
Surfacing is a far more sophisticated novel than The Edible Woman. Atwood, while pursuing her doctoral studies at Harvard, experienced considerable success as a poet, including winning the Governor Generals Awards for her collection The Circle Game. With that success undoubtedly come assuredness's using a poetic voice. In Surfacing also encounter that poetic voice. Whereas The Edible Woman is both prosaic and satiric, Surfacing immerses the reader in a narrative and first-person narrative voice that sometimes defies the strict rules for sentences in prose as it floats from idea to idea, event to event, following a readily traceable time line while frequently flashing back to pasts that oftentimes lack clarity. Surfacing may look back in time when making this commentary. The political realm and the economic realm often entwine, and such is certainly the case in Surfacing. At the time Atwood is writing Surfacing, she is also writing the poetry collection Power Politics, which traces a heterosexual relationship through stages.
