Published in 1981, Bodily Harm is author Margaret Atwood's fifth novel, a stunningly bold and swift work that spans a little more than 300 pages and a few weeks of time that actually end up stretching across an entire lifetime.

The novel follows the character of Rennie, a travel and pop-culture writer who tries to escape the traumatic experiences of her own past by going on assignment to the fictional Caribbean islands of St. Antoine and St. Agathe. Unfortunately, Rennie escapes to an area that is sadly underdeveloped, having been politically abandoned by the British.

But the most satisfying thing about Bodily Harm is perhaps how closely Rennie's own personal journeys parallel those of these two, lost and desperate Caribbean islands. In many ways, Rennie is in way over her head, and the novel quickly winds its way through a maze of wild events that force Rennie and the different characters on the islands to question their place in the world. Not only personally, on an internal level, but politically on an external level. Of course, Atwood keeps the novel grounded in reality, and the levels of exploration differ greatly from character to character.

Actually, Bodily Harm is no different from previous Atwood novels, in that it follows a character trying to break free from her past and grasp onto a brighter and more promising future. And yet, Bodily Harm takes this idea a step further, by criticizing and questioning the actions of our own westernized culture; specifically, the actions of the "sweet Canadians," who the novel suggests are just as naive as the young Rennie.

In this respect, Bodily Harm is Atwood's most political novel yet, and Atwood does not shy away from criticizing Canada's own international political practices. The novel suggests that in many ways, the Canadian government is just as naive and inexperienced in dealing with the complex social and economic problems of third world countries, as your common North American tourist generally is. To this end, Atwood has created many colorfully vivid characters, all of whom have seemingly valid, if not opposing ways of finding solutions to their complex and universal problems of debt, hunger, poverty and a largely uneducated population.

To help shape Rennie's viewpoints, Atwood does a brilliant job creating a narrative that combines first person with an omniscient third person that very smoothly moves between the past and the present, as well as bits of a possible future. Bodily Harm is very effective on this level, in that it explore's Rennie's own personal journey as a survivor of Breast Cancer. The exposition that underline many of the scenes keeps that fear at the forefront, leading up to a heart wrenching climax that will ultimately break Rennie's naivete, and perhaps even force her to change her whole outlook on life.

There is a scene near the middle of Signs, one of the latest Hollywood movie hits, where Mel Gibson, playing Father Graham Hess talks to Joaquin Pheonix about how there are two groups of people that react to an event. The first, are people who people who sees an event as more than luck, in that they believe in faith and see an event as a sign that there is someone out there watching over us. The second group sees an event as just pure luck, where there is always a fifty / fifty chance of an event being good or bad.

These ideas and themes seem to be a common staple of good literature and storytelling. And it was that scene from the movie Signs that came to my mind when I read the last two paragraphs of Bodily Harm. Specifically, our omniscient third person narrator describes a scene that reads like this: "The scar prods at her, a reminder, a silent voice counting, a countdown. Zero is waiting somewhere, whoever said there was life everlasting; so why feel grateful? She doesn't have much time left, for anything. But neither does anyone else. She's paying attention that's all. She will never be rescued. She has already been rescued. She is not exempt. Instead she is lucky, suddenly, finally, she's overflowing with luck, it's this luck holding her up."

Descriptions like these gel Bodily Harm together into a very cohesive and very emotional work. The ending is frightfully realistic, and almost unbelievable, almost paving the way for the darker twists and turns of her novels to come. But in many ways, the ending is all too reminiscent of the stories one hears on the news every so often, about tourists who have been caught up in larger then life situations with authorities in foreign countries. And the socio-political viewpoints of "Bodily Harm" are interesting and important to consider, as the novel's ending is so severely needed to help slap Rennie and even Atwood's readers awake from their deeply ingrained pop-culture daze.

Seemingly underrated, and probably seldom sought after, Bodily Harm is swift and to the point as it takes us on its journey. I strongly recommend that people seek out this novel for its seemingly sterile-under-the-weight-of-circumstance look at the world around us. It's that and so much more that makes Bodily Harm one of Atwood's most intriguing works to this point in her career.

Grade: A

(c) August 24, 2002, Steven H. Lee

Atwood's Novel Oeuvre Reviewed...

7. Cat's Eye
6. The Handmaid's Tale
5. Bodily Harm
4. Life Before Man
3. Lady Oracle
2. Surfacing
1. The Edible Woman






Recommended: Yes