The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
Read for: The What’s in a Name Challenge – book title with a profession in it, The 1% Well Read Challenge
I’m still unsure about how I feel about this book. I finished it last night and after sleeping on it and reading some other reviews, I’m liking it a bit more than I did initially.
The story is about three women who are connected by their hurt at the hands of a single woman, Zenia. Zenia is supposedly dead, but on the day that the novel begins, the friends are meeting for lunch when Zenia walks into the restaurant. As each of the women leave the restaurant that day, they begin to remember the circumstances that brought Zenia into their lives and caused them so much pain.
Zenia is extremely manipulative and she knows exactly how to act and what to say to each of these women to be allowed into their lives and to steal their men. We never really learn anything else about Zenia because everything she says is a lie. Her history is a story carefully tailored for the person she’s telling it to, in order to garner the most sympathy. Zenia must be extremely intelligent to be able to determine exactly what will work the best on each of these women, but she is not at all likable. Her motivation for destroying these women’s relationships seems to be none other than because she can.
The story is told, in turn, from the viewpoint of the three friends. First we hear from Tony, then Charis and lastly Roz. Each of the women, from their own point of view, seem weak but when we view them from the other women’s perspective they become stronger and much more likable. Isn’t this true of real life? Are the people around us able to see our strengths better than we can ourselves? I liked the book a lot better once I realized this. I was feeling disappointed that the characters were all so weak-willed when I noticed that they weren’t really. It was just their internal voice that was, but these women were a lot stronger than they thought they were.
The book was centred around Zenia and I thought it was about her, but I’ve realized that it wasn’t about her at all. It was about the three women. This is their story, not hers and that’s what I like about the book. This book definitely isn’t for everyone, but if you like Atwood’s other books, you’ll like this one too.
Other reviews: caribousmom, dancing badger
