Surfacing Summary
Margaret Atwood

Surfacing Summary

Part I

Surfacing opens with the unnamed narrator exclaiming, "I can't believe I'm on this road again." She is traveling with married friends, David and Anna, and her lover, Joe, to a remote island on a lake in Northern Quebec, where she spent much of her childhood, to search for her missing father. As they travel, Joe and David shoot a film that they will call "Random Samples," a compilation of shots "of things they come across." The narrator admits that she doesn't actually want to see her father; she just wants to make sure he is safe. She explains that she has had a strained relationship with him since her parents never forgave her for her hasty marriage, her subsequent divorce, and her abandonment of her child.

Anna confesses to the narrator that her marriage to David is troubled, which prompts the narrator to question her own relationship with... View more of the Surfacing Summary