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Jan 25, 2009

Aerin rated it:

It surprises me that so few GoodReads members enjoyed this book. I think it's one of Atwood's best - and I love everything Atwood has written. Although I hesitate to say this, I think the problem is that a lot of people don't get this book. I don't want that comment to sound pretentious or holier-than-thou, because I am the last person to look to for all that erudite english-major crap. I just think people go into this book expecting one thing, find something completely different, and so dec More...

9 comments like (22 people liked it)

Oct 20, 2009

oriana rated it:

Margaret Atwood has been my most favorite writer since I was sixteen. There's maybe ten authors in second place, many of whom (especially Cortázar) regularly rear their heads in my imagination to try to supplant Atwood's place for first, but every time I go back to Margaret, I seriously fall in love again. More than anything, I love the way that her language shifts my actual thought patterns, or at least my constantly streaming internal monologue, until it sounds like she's the one inside my hea More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2011

Courtney rated it:

I am a *huge* fan of modern Atwood and feel a compulsive need to read all of her work. Bodily Harm may have changed my perspective. While in works such as The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx Crake, and The Blind Assassin Atwood seems unafraid to play and create literary techniques to heighten both plot and theme, in her earlier books, character studies comprise the bulk of her efforts. If written by anyone but a smattering of authors, I would have given Bodily Harm a single star; however, because wri More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 09, 2009

HRM Maire rated it:

OK, this is definitely not the type of book I would normally pick up even at a library where it's free. So how did I come to read this book, you ask? Well, we'd been digging around our place and found a hidden cache of books in the basement--gasp! Books I hadn't looked at in years or even remembered I had. Don't even remember how I obtained some of them, and I assume I had this because I had read "The Handmaid's Tale" and thought I'd read something else by Atwood. I've been cranky More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 24, 2011

Erin rated it:

Bodily Harm is a thriller unlike any I have ever read. Atwood places her heroine on a small Caribbean island on the verge of revolution, but this reads nothing like a mainstream thriller. The action comparable to a traditional thriller doesn't take place until the last quarter of the book; until that point, Atwood builds a quietly menacing mood by showing us how heroine Rennie has become detached from her body through cancer, surgery, sexual aversion and lust. It isn't until the revolution oc More...

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Jan 26, 2012

Angela added it

One of the 'lost' Margaret Atwood titles I somehow missed when I went through my Atwood stage back in my first year of uni. A very early novel, I was immediately surprised at how much her literary voice was already developed! This reads like something from a much more mature author - like something from a much later point in Atwood's career. Quite simply, brilliant! Highly recommended!

What is so wonderful about Atwood's writing is the way in which she encompasses the very human prob More...

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Mar 04, 2011

Meredith rated it:

I love Margaret Atwood but now I remember why I stopped reading her novels in the late 90's. They just are not good for my mental health, the whole dark aura of the book invades my life. This means the book is excellent & does its job. But it's painful.

I'm looking forward to reading some other people's reviews on Goodreads. Even though this book seems like a thriller, it's really about the main character's inner world and her relationship with her body. I'm not sure I comprehe More...

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Oct 06, 2010

Trunatrschild rated it:

Atwood is at her best again! It's not my favorite of her books but Atwood is really good at creating characters who are very disconnected from life and I'm just the opposite, if I was that disconnected I would commit suicide. This story explores breast cancer and sex and sexual feelings. I understand some of her feelings as I had some of them after my first operation, a simple hernia operation, but as I age with more operations I don't have the same feelings.
The reviewers say that this bo More...

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Dec 30, 2007

Laura rated it:

Anther stinker, I’m afraid. This book is about a Canadian freelance writer who goes to the Caribbean to do a ‘fluff’ travel piece after dealing with a partial mastectomy and a break up with her boyfriend. She gets mixed up with local politics and things go from bad to worse as the country slips into chaos after a coup. Although the premise sounds interesting, the book is dreadful – not a good read!

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 11, 2010

Misha rated it:

The novel is dark and violent with a few attempts at comic relief. Rennie’s nightmare vacation parallels her physical and emotional battles with cancer. Flashbacks are interspersed throughout the story, which occasionally made things confusing. It took awhile to catch on that the past is distinguished because of the lack of quotation marks and other punctuation.

Bodily Harm was slow going until about a third of the way through at page 100, when it finally picked up. Despite that, Atw More...

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Jan 20, 2009

Carolanne rated it:

Atwoods writing style is really the only thing that made this book half decent. The plot line was dull and I never felt any kind of connection to any of the characters. I guess I was so uninterested that by the end of the book, I was only half paying attention prior to the climax so I ended up being confused, but not really caring to go back and short out the mess so I just went with the flow.
I was extremely disappointed when I think that this author wrote Handmaid's tale and while not as More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Nancy rated it:

I am not a huge Margaret Atwood fan, but read this book because she wrote it based on knowledge and experience she gained while spending time on the island of Bequia in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Beguia is one of the Grenadine Islands, part of St. Vincent where I worked from 1982-1984. My understanding is that Margaret Atwood went to school with Pat Mitchell, wife of "Son" James Mitchell who was elected as Prime Minster of St. Vincent in 1984. Son Mitchell was born in Bequia.

More...

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Sep 24, 2010

Koen rated it:

It's odd when people make puns that don't work at all in the language they're making them in, but work just fine in another one. When that other language is one the punner speaks, it can be taken as cultured or arrogant or both, but when it isn't, it smells like plagiarism.

Anyway. This is a novel about a Canadian woman and her relationships with various largely abusive men. Yes, I too was surprised that Atwood would go so far outside of her comfort zone. If I really am going to read ev More...

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Feb 06, 2010

Viktoriya rated it:

I am really not sure how I feel about this book. Do I love it? Do I hate it? There were times when I wanted to give up on it, and yet I couldn't. Somehow I kept finding myself still reading it. Maybe it was the fact that just like her main character, Rennie, I am trying to learn to live again.
As far as the plot goes. It was fairly simply and almost uneventful for the first half of the book. In the second part, the story makes a sudden turn and all hell breaks loose. I was, however, a litt More...

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Apr 20, 2009

Emily Ann rated it:

I didn't necessarily enjoy this book, and yet it was powerful, exceptionally well-written, and one that is going to stick with me for a long time. To that end, I think it's one that I will enjoy more in retrospect than I did as I read it, and why it's deserving of five stars.

In the beginning, I felt the book dragged, and I was frustrated with how Atwood dangled things out and only explained pieces afterward--using a non-linear narrative to build suspense rather than laying it all More...

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Jan 29, 2012

Bekki rated it:

I was very disappointed with this book. I kept expecting something exciting to happen or to get some insight into the characters but it never happened. The lead character could have had some insightful moments but no, and all the characters seemed very one-dimensional. I wouldn't have entirely minded this if there had been a storyline that connected and built but that didn't happen. The civil war wasn't well explained, there was no action to relieve the monotony and I felt very much in the d More...

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Sep 11, 2011

Logophile rated it:

Maybe because I listened to rather than read this, but it never seemed to entirely hold together. An odd blend of Atwood's dry intellectualizing of mundane social life and overt political topics. The climax was very powerful, though, and Laura will stay with me for a long time.

Not my favorite Atwood—she's at her drier and more intellectual here—but I appreciated the Banana Republic politics and the apolitical narrator's political awakening, if not the quasi-feminism. The scenes in the More...

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Jan 21, 2011

Carolyn rated it:

My bookclub is currently reading all of Margaret Atwood's books in chronological order. A lot of these have been rereads for me, but I first read this one so long ago, around 1995 I think, that I remembered nothing past the opening scene, an that only upon beginning to read this time round. So far, this has been my favourite of Atwood's earlier books. The characters felt more specific and relatable, even if there were times when you wanted to give Rennie a smack in the face. Her bad decision More...

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Nov 29, 2009

Lacey rated it:

I was able to get into this book right away because I like Margaret Atwood's writing style, but I did spend a lot of time wondering what the point of this book actually was. On the surface, it's about a woman who has recently had a mastectomy dealing with the aftermath of the cancer and her partner's leaving her. As a journalist, she convinces her editor to let her go away to do a "travel piece," and she ends up on a little-known island in the Caribbean. Rennie comes across as a bit to More...

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Apr 13, 2010

Hester rated it:

Like most of Atwood's books, I finished this one confused. I felt like I understood what it was about until the last chapter. It is about the main character's emotional growth and it is about how people interact. It all felt very real to me.

As I reflect on the novel, I feel like I am slowly beginning to understand it. Aerin's review helped. It is about a detached and damaged woman slowly coming back to life and discovering what life is about. The first five chapters are definite More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2012

Julie rated it:

Though I've really liked other Atwood books in the past (Alias Grace, The Handmaid's Tale) I wasn't a fan of this book at all. As I read, I felt like I was trapped inside a cheesy romance novel while a much better novel was going on all around it.

In the book, the protagonist, Remmie Wilford, retreats to a Caribbean Island. She's there to write a light travel piece and to emotionally regroup after undergoing a partial mastectomy and also losing her lover. But, as it turns out, all t More...

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Jan 09, 2012

Caleigh rated it:

People who think they don't like Margaret Atwood can't have read many of her books. I get that not every book will appeal to everyone, but while she may have a distinctive writing style, her subject matter is far more diverse than most think.

Bodily Harm is one of those books that went in a direction I didn't expect and that might well appeal to a lot of people who claim not to be an Atwood fan. At the beginning, the story of Rennie - a woman trying to find her way after breast cancer More...

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May 19, 2010

zespri rated it:

Rennie is a journalist who has recently undergone surgery for breast cancer. With the removal of part of her physical body - her reality starts to disintegrate and the layers of her personality are exposed. The awful lover falls off, unable to cope with her disfigurement, and Rennie is left contemplating her future. She decides to take a break on a Caribbean island, in the middle of local elections. She finds herself in the middle of the action, and in a way this becomes her redemption. Re More...

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Feb 19, 2011

Ana rated it:

Bodily Harm / 0-385-49107-7

"Bodily Harm" is one of Atwood's earlier works, and this sometimes shows through the writing. The grim subject matter (a woman struggling with her own mortality after a bout with cancer) is thoughtfully and carefully explored, but the actual prose is a sometimes lethargic and difficult to wade through.

The main character struggles through the daily routine of her life as a magazine writer, unsure how to break through the haze induced b More...

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Nov 01, 2008

Allison rated it:

Once again, Margaret Atwood's style saves this book from what I would consider to be a complete failure. Her ability to make you, the reader, see the characters, to feel as though you know them as well (or as little) as they know each other and to feel the emotions they feel toward one another is her strength as a writer, and she does not fail to exploit that strength in Bodily Harm. However, the way the novel is structured around the book lends itself to a jerky-feeling reading, leaving the r More...

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Feb 11, 2008

Tory rated it:

The story of Rennie, a young journalist who seeks escape when she goes off to a small island in the Caribbean to write a travel piece. She’s just gone through a break-up and a surgery that took a piece of her body, but left her cancer free. Instead of peace, she finds political unrest in the midst of a coup.

The author has a strong narrative style that resonates well. She doesn’t waste any words and gives the reader an intimate glimpse into the character. The strength of the novel, th More...

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Jul 15, 2008

lisa rated it:

Looking over the other reviews of this book, I see that many people disliked it. While I agree that the plot was hardly entertaining, there were so many amazing passages where Atwood subtly and brilliantly demonstrated certain conditions of femaleness/femininity in post-feminist North American society. I wanted to underline about half of the book. She gets the specificity of a certain white, middle-class alienation that VERY FEW writers are able to capture without some sort of heavy handedness. More...

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Jul 23, 2010

Mahasin rated it:

This is a book that while beautifully written, I couldn't relate to at my current age. Bodily Harm is the story of a woman who is going through some major life changes, her marriage has fallen apart, she has breast cancer, and she ends up leaving the country to find herself.

I think that someone who has experienced more life than I (I believe I was only nineteen or twenty when I read this book) would enjoy it more.

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Feb 08, 2012

Christin rated it:

I was enchanted by Bodily Harm because of its blatantly poco premise about a Canadian journalist who inadvertently goes to a former British colony island nation during a political coup. I am not sure which real island nation it is based on, maybe Haiti, but like all of Atwood's work, I found her ability to render a place and its feeling with exquisite detail remarkable. What I found more problematic in this text was her inability to fully render minor characters. I suspect this was intentio More...

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Apr 08, 2009

G. rated it:

A couple of years ago I read all the big Atwoods and absolutely loved them. So when a couple of days ago this book caught my eye - I wanted a relatively quick but good read, I thought 'perfect'.

Turns out 'Bodily Harm' is one of Atwood's lesser known for a reason; I found the writing style interesting, but it was also a little too 'writing exercise' for me... the characters all bored me. I barely finished it, skimming the last 100 or so pages. Yawn.

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