A BOOK REPORT -THE ROBBER BRIDE

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

This book is mainly about four women, one of whom, Zenia, seems bent upon destroying the other three. At first the three others, Roz, Charis, and Tony, although friends, do not know the full extent that Zenia has affected each of them.

The story is told through the perspective of each of the characters, told in each of their voices, stemming from their experiences, and of each other, but from their back stories, each strikingly different. Zenia’s story is revealed through her own relevations to the other characters some of which may have been true or not at all true. Atwood’s characters, except Zenia’s, were well developed, and she revealed humorous aspects of each person, that lightened the reading, and highlighted their differences. 

Writing from inside a character's head is counter to the popular admonition to writers, to "show" instead of "tell." Atwood does show her characters but also does a lot of telling in this book.

The plot is a complex and involved psycho-drama, a genre which I find intriguing in general, and I enjoyed the book. I am also interested in what motivates malice in some people, and am interested to see how other authors explain this. Zenia, a Medusa- like character, may be motivated purely by a desire to get things she wants from others, and her malice may only be an attempt to fight back when her destructiveness is confronted by one of the others, although her complex lies and malice are never fully explained. Violence is seldom understood, and Atwood didn’t add much about intentionally destructive behavior that might shed light on that question.

Atwood has dealt with similar topics in other books, Cat’s Eye and A Handmaid’s Tale. From her book conclusions, I suspect she thinks malevolence just IS, and others are victimized for a variety of reasons, until they learn ways to avoid such situations and /or people who inflict harm. Atwood has competently described the subtleties of character and the nature of how different kinds of people become ensnared as these situations unfold.

Each of the characters became somewhat more aware during the extended encounters they had with Zenia, and realized how they had once been victimized by her and yet still had only partially broken their own part in the pattern by the end. People do get victimized, and these women, and even their husbands had not become impervious to being victimized by the end. Zenia died as a result of her own lifestyle, leaving the other characters free of her, but not as yet resolved to be more resistant to exploitation.

The book was too long, I thought, and could have been cut down by about 20 percent, by making the philosophical views of each woman, Roz, Charis, and Tony more concise.

The character of the three or so decades in which these friends evolved should be familiar to many readers of middle age or older. I did find that since the decades of these women’s experiences of each other and of personal histories were not chronological, the author might have explained the date setup with a sentence or two to let the reader know which period was being described, to avoid confusion.

Overall, I liked the book and would read others by Ms. Atwood.

Review by Ruth Zachary.