The Robber Bride
The Robber Bride is a horrific book full of people doing terrible things to each other. More than Mr. Fox, it drove the horror of this tale home, and I felt genuine concern for what would happen to some of the characters, particularly Larry. But this book also has something that I didn't think existed in Margaret Atwood's work: a happy ending.
This book tells the tale of four women who met in college, when three of them lived in a boarding house together. Over the years, Zenia has hurt the other three. She's a con artist and a compulsive liar and she seduces men away from Toby, Charis, and Roz. And while she is definitely a terrible person, she's also a bit of a scapegoat. None of the women are ever really comfortable with the imbalance in their relationships, so they just blame the dissolution of them on Zenia. By the end, it's clear that it's not nearly so black and white as they would like to believe.
I really enjoyed this book, which takes turns telling the story of each of the three wronged women from their perspective. Tony was my favorite, an intellectual who is more comfortable dissecting historical battles than dealing with the present. Roz is boisterous, but also practical and caring. Charis, on the other hand is a flighty, hippy-dippy woman who reminded me of my cousin's mother-in-law. She's a good person, but she also so naive and trusting. She believes in a lot of weird stuff, which makes it hard to take her seriously. She was definitely a fore-runner for the whole idea of the Earth's Children in Atwood's more recent MaddAddam trilogy.
And then there's Zenia, who floats through life destroying everything in her path. She lies and steals and then disappears before anyone can catch on. But she peppers just enough truth in the things she says that it's hard to write her off completely. And as evil as she can be, it's hard to blame her entirely for the havoc she wreaks.
This book tells the tale of four women who met in college, when three of them lived in a boarding house together. Over the years, Zenia has hurt the other three. She's a con artist and a compulsive liar and she seduces men away from Toby, Charis, and Roz. And while she is definitely a terrible person, she's also a bit of a scapegoat. None of the women are ever really comfortable with the imbalance in their relationships, so they just blame the dissolution of them on Zenia. By the end, it's clear that it's not nearly so black and white as they would like to believe.
I really enjoyed this book, which takes turns telling the story of each of the three wronged women from their perspective. Tony was my favorite, an intellectual who is more comfortable dissecting historical battles than dealing with the present. Roz is boisterous, but also practical and caring. Charis, on the other hand is a flighty, hippy-dippy woman who reminded me of my cousin's mother-in-law. She's a good person, but she also so naive and trusting. She believes in a lot of weird stuff, which makes it hard to take her seriously. She was definitely a fore-runner for the whole idea of the Earth's Children in Atwood's more recent MaddAddam trilogy.
And then there's Zenia, who floats through life destroying everything in her path. She lies and steals and then disappears before anyone can catch on. But she peppers just enough truth in the things she says that it's hard to write her off completely. And as evil as she can be, it's hard to blame her entirely for the havoc she wreaks.
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