The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.78 You Save: $10.17 (64%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Robber Bride
Book Review: Great Dame Margaret
Summary: 4 Stars
Great writer that is...Margaret Atwood is a tiny woman, like the heroine of this novel. Based on a fairy tale idea, this is a thoroughly contemporary novel by one of the great satirists of all time. This novel lives -- not only is Atwood's city of Toronto magnificently and accurately depicted here -- but the characters are all women that we might have known. The central character -- oh, dear, who is the central character, is it the professor Toni who narrates the book and seems so much like Atwood herself -- or is it the focus Zenia, the perfect woman who seems so model-like, so tall, so slender, so hip, so intelligent? Anyway, this is a book about allusions. The Robber bride is based on the idea of the Robber Bridegroom, the evil fairy tale character who murders his wives. Zenia is completely other than she seems. Far from perfect. Far from accomplished. A myth. This is a book to read now if you haven't read it already and then to reread in about five years. I think it is time for my second reading!Book Review: How One Woman Played with her Friends' Lives
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a wonderful novel with great depth and readbility.
Three Canadian women, all college friends now in their 40's, have had their lives wrecked havoc with by a woman named Zenia. She had deviously ingratiated herself with them through subterfuge, lies and dishonesty. Though her impact was in the friends' younger years, she is unforgotten, almost a mythological figure in the painful memories and emotions she rivives. Supposedly dead, the friends spy Zenia in a restaurant and immediately fear that she has come back to do more harm.
Through revisiting each of their lives, their formative years and the vulnerabilities that permit Zenia to gain entrance, we see them as individuals and as 'women' who come to expect and mete out certain cultural expectations. Zenia is some sort of throwback - wanton whore, witch, man-woman - who operates on another plane. Rules don't apply to her. She seeks out women as friends but her real agenda is to steal their men.
How each of the friends cope with her in their early years and how they deal with her return is the primary theme of this book. It is a marvelous read.
Book Review: I couldn't put it down - vintage Atwood
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the second Atwood novel I have read, and I found it even more difficult to put down than Cat's Eye. I also found it easier to understand. The characters, albeit a tad stereotypical and narrowly drawn, still managed to draw me in and in, fact, reminded me of various parts of myself. I found myself wondering if that was part of Atwood's point -- that we have a bit of Toni, Roz, Charis, and even Zenia in all of us. It was amazing to me how fascinated I was by Zenia, given how distant she was in the novel. There were things that were not great about the book. The characters and some of the relationships were predictable. But that is to be expected with Atwood, who seems to address the same themes in all her writing -- the power relations between men and women, and how the female need for male acceptance impacts the relationships between women. One should read Atwood for the poetic nature of her writing; the stunning metaphors and the descriptions that haunt the reader long after the book is done.
Book Review: I felt it was enticing and difficult to put down.
Summary: 4 Stars
I haven't read a lot of Margaret Atwood, just The classic Handmaid's Tale, and the beautifully crafted Alias Grace, a book a would recommend to all. However, from what I see, this Canadian author has the fabulous ability of mixing her style up in every written piece. Without the author's name, there would be little thought that such different novels can be claimed by the same author. I throughly enjoyed this book, although I was frustrated by the weakness of all three characters, and the ending left a little to be desired. I do feel that the pathetic nature of the very three different women is meant to illustrate that 'love' can affect us all, despite our creed, social seating and persona. I longed for the ending to be of more substance, but on the whole, loved the fact that the characters were so throughly developed, and enjoyed the balancing and symmetry of the novel.Book Review: Intense and compelling
Summary: 5 Stars
All of Atwood's novels are different, and "The Robber Bride" is no exception. Set in Toronto in the 60's, 70's and 80's, three friends from college in turn fall prey to the diabolical Xenia, surely one of the more villainous women in modern fiction. Xenia is wild and gorgeous in college, with a shadowy reputation. She returns to Toronto in each of the next three decades and sets her sights on one of three women, Charis, the dreamy child of the 60's, the studious Tony, the successful businesswoman Roz. Xenia discovers in each woman the crack through which she can enter and destroy her life. For Tony, Xenia plays upon her feeling of being an outsider; for Charis, her need to take care of another person; for Roz, her desire to admire her father. Once she lies her way into another's life, Xenia steals the man and the money and runs. Although we never discover why Xenia does what she does, Atwood brilliantly lets us see how each person has an Achilles heel, a vulnerable point, where another can enter and take over. Atwood takes us back in time to each woman's childhood, first love, and adult life--the reader becomes engrossed in each life, almost to the exclusion of what came before.
It all works out, perhaps a bit too neatly, and this time for good--each woman accepts and moves beyond the losses Xenia has inflicted on her, quite a bit wiser in the end. I found the psychological dynamic Atwood constructs between Xenia and each of the women engrossing, and the story is simply an excellent read. Highly recommended.