The Robber Bride

My mother-in-law is a big fan of Margaret Atwood and she passed this book along to me. We don't have the same taste in books, so I was a little wary at first. I shouldn't have been! This is a great story for anyone that likes to read interesting, intriguing stories.

Atwood starts you off in the present and introduces you to the four main characters of the story. Then you are taken back in the past to lean of each characters history. Then the book comes back to the present. It is not hard to follow, but the more you learn about each character the more you don't want to put the book down.

Very intriguing...and leaves you wondering why these people would make the choices they've made.

Margaret Atwood is a master of rhetoric and one of our most talented and original literary voices. She is an imaginative and probing investigator of life and relationships. "The Robber Bride" offers us the opportunity to follow the lives of three women friends through three decades and to vicariously experience the plethora of destructive deeds heaped upon each of them by "the villainess" of the piece who systematically befriends and betrays each of them. Reading this book is akin playing with nesting dolls.....you keep opening them wondering what the next one looks like.

I'm not a Lifetime Movie kind of person so this book initially gave me pause, and truthfully I didn't think I was a contemporary fiction kind of person, either. But I thought this book was a blast. The characters are rendered so deeply and with such careful detail, you *have* to care about what happens to them. I'll skip the plot summarizing, as that has been addressed elsewhere.

There are some good criticisms here calling the women out as being "pathetic" and they are deeply flawed, but that is what makes them so interesting. Despite their flaws, the main characters are all quirky and loveable. Each one exhibits admirable qualities in addition to their cringe-worthy judgements and decisions. The vivid descriptions and layers of themes and motifs enticed me to absolutely live and breathe Atwood's world-made-strange.

There are definitely some moments in this book when the characters make such horrible judgements, you need a heavy dose of suspended disbelief. But I can say handily that the book was time very well spent. I honestly felt like I spent a few wild days in Toronto, traveled back in time to watch the making of the Baby Boomer Generation, and got to watch some very bad people get their comeuppance.

I read Handmaid's Tale, and enjoyed it, so I figured this would be along the same lines. Not EVEN the same kind of book!...there were only a few parts I found funny. I did think the book was long at times, especially the chapter describing Roz and her history. But, generally, it was a decent read.
Zenia (the thief) is a very complex character, and chapters are spent describing how Zenia helped to destroy the 3 main characters' relationships (Roz, Charis, Tony). But, Zenia is never given her own chapter on why she feels like being this way. I think this is on purpose though; I think the book is really about women and "rebirth" throughout their lives - women coming to terms with loss and learning to let go. I'm surprised Oprah didn't pick this book!

I've just finished reading "Blind Assasin" by Atwood when my husband gave me this book as an early Christmas present. I am so grateful to have this book ~~ I feel as if I know Tony, Charis and Roz as well as I know my best friends. Their shared jealousy and anger with Zenia is refreshingly honest. They remind me of three ladies sharing their stories with each other in mutual aggravation with the central character who flits in and out of their lives. Once you pick up this book, you won't be able to put it down. I know, I tried and couldn't.

Though the BBC raved at the depth and brilliance of this novel, I read it with a constant sensation of hearing the same 'voice' just being put in the mouth of a women in a different situations. Of the four 'survivors' only Zenia sticks in my memory as having a life, a voice and a purpose of her own. All the painstakingly described situations of the other three, Tony, Charis and Roz, vary in credibility, but there's a sameness in their way of expressing themselves. In the end, there turns out to be a lot more to Zenia than they credited, and possibly Atwood is trying to say just that; you're doomed to sameness as a Canadian woman and incapable of grasping any diet too strong.

Dr. Jeanne Shutes chose this fine book, together with four other excellent works of fiction, to explore around a theme during one of her semesters of Self Awareness through Literature--the longest running book group known (>40 years). If you or your book group/club are interested in knowing the other four works she chose for this theme or are interested in other thematic collections, you will find these listed on the blog, "Personal Growth through Fiction," where her recommendations, chosen from literally hundreds she has read, are offered as a community service for book clubs/groups. All her choices are in paperback and available at the store or locally.

This is ostensibly the story of three women who lose both their men and piece of themselves to a shifting illusion called Zenia. She alternately seduces and dumps the men belonging to Toni, a bespectacled war historian, Charis, a self-doubting but enlightened earth mother, and Roz, an irrepressible business woman and mother of three.
As the story unfolds through flashbacks, it becomes apparent that Zenia is not what she seems. This is really the story of how we so often refuse to see the truth about ourselves and our loved ones. Zenia is a mirror held up to each of our heroines (the ordinary kind) to reflect these truths.
The characterizations are wonderful. As the reader you get to go on a delicious voyeuristic romp through each of the three women's lives.
Overall, an enjoyable read with a good mix of entertainment and thought-provoking material.

This book was so bad it was painful. I do not know HOW I made it through. At first it was good and I was engaged, and then it just disintegrated. I only kept going to see if there was any clue as to the protagonist's motivation. There wasn't. If it had been my first Atwood, it would have been my last.

This was a riff on The Robber Bridegroom, a story I don't know so I can't say how/if it succeeded on that level. Ultimately, it was about three women who's lives are torn asunder by another woman, Zenia, who's motives, as I mentioned, are never discovered.

This woman comes into all their lives, sucks them in with lies and then steals their men and their money. Leaves, and comes back and do it again.

The story is told from each individual woman's point of view, so we have to go through everything three times. I'm never a big fan of that. The worst part about this book was how over-developed all the characters were. More caricatures than characters. There's the schlumpy funny one, the studious war-obsessed one, and the (worst of all) dippy spiritual one. Everything that happened was experience through their "type" - at one point there's a death and the the schlumpy funny one cracks a joke and then berates herself for cracking the joke, and hopes to mature some day. The studious war one thinks the occasion should be marked by cannon fire, and the dippy spiritual one wonders if she should keep the vessel that the remains are in but thinks better of it knowing that it will contain remnants of the crimson energy so attached to this person, and they really don't need anything tethering this person to the earthly plane.

A minor character spoke almost exclusively in quotes - i.e. "How are you today, Boyce?" - "A rose by any other name is still a rose, Shakespeare." Really Boyce. A simple "fine" would have done.

In no way recommended.

When I was reading this book I thought I might recommend my husband read it. He generally shies away from reading female authors on the basis that it must be "chic lit". (Except for Donna Leon, to whom we are both addicted) I thought he should give it a go and he did. He says, with me, that it is one of the best books he has read. Now my daughter has just finished reading it and she says it is, possibly, the best book she has read. (And she reads a lot.)

The way the author can get into the minds of three very different female characters is quite extraordinary. And the ending is brilliant. Buy it and read it soon.

The Robber Bride opens with Tony, whose portrait I first thought was a sort of cruel atwoodian self-caricature. Then the narrative leads us into the lives and souls of the other two protagonists, with such depth and true-to-life notations that I kept thinking, there she is, that must be her! The characters are not marked "Intel Inside", but "Real life Inside". And where can anybody find such rich real human substance if not from her own flesh ? That woman is everywhere, she can take all shapes. Maybe she really is Zenia.
Maybe that's what writing novels is about. You get your characters right and then you keep torturing them, again and again, just for the kick of it, even though they could never even attempt to harm you.
But contrary to Zenia whose force is purely destructive, Margaret Atwood brought these women to life, she shaped them, patiently and skillfully and lovingly -not without a touch of witchcraft, let me tell you! In that, she has the presence and reality that Zenia perhaps lacks.
BTW, one could be bothered by the absence of reality of the character of Zenia. I took her as a kind of geometrical point, something abstractly mathematical, or maybe a black hole. It is pointless to apply regular psychologic analysis tools to her character. She's just there for the others to reveal themselves against.
A fantastic read, anyway!

I couldn't put this book down, and a year after I read it the first time, I read it again. Zenia is such a great female villain, she makes the book an irresistible read. The other female characters are well-developed and given such interesting qualities and lives.
Atwood's Alias Grace and Cat's Eye are better all-round books than this one, but this book has a certain wisdom in it communicated through the lives of the very different women who are united in their dislike for one woman, and yet despite this they all seem to have learned something valuable through Zenia.

I don't know if I should say this book was the worst long book I ever finished or the longest terrible book I ever finished. I don't know why I went all the way to the end except that at one point, I'd already invested 10 hours into it so I felt an obligation. I had read The Handmaid's Tale when I was very young and don't remember it, so I had been planning to re-read it. While I was at the library I noticed The Robber Bride and thought maybe I'd give this one a try first since Margaret Atwood is acclaimed as an amazing writer.

I'm so disappointed. I just hope that this experience does not keep me from trying some of her other books, because I understand that they are supposed to be truly wonderful. This one was not.

I think you have to like the protagonists of a story or at least admire them or or find a connection with them, but the three women in this story were pathetic. I realize that they grew up in a different time of the world, but still their behavior borders on the embarrassing. No woman should ever allow themselves to be treated in the way that these women just accepted as okay. If the story was about them overcoming these behaviors that would be one thing, but it wasn't. They kept acting just as stupid as they got older. Zenia, our villain, was a HORRIBLE person, so there was nothing to connect us to her, either. Without making a connection to any of the characters, there just wasn't anything to like about this book. I just felt depressed that not only would people act in this manner, but that people would enjoy reading this. Does that mean that the people who enjoy this book think the behaviors exhibited by the characters were okay? If so, that just truly makes me sad.

I can't even say it was necessarily a well written book because it could have seriously used some editing down. There were some long blah blah blah sections that just made me wonder what the point was. And, seriously, have you ever met ANYONE in your life that speaks ONLY in quotes from famous people? Literally, the Boyce character only answers questions in quotes. I don't think at one point in the book he EVER said anything that wasn't from a quote. What the heck? Overall, it was a terrible let down and I feel shocked that after all I've heard and read about Margaret Atwood that she would write a book this bad. I'm twice as shocked that so many people like it.

If you're considering reading it, consider getting it from your library versus purchasing it and go into it knowing that it's way too long and the characters are very sad.

I've been slowly making my way through all of Atwood over the years, and as this is probably one of her lesser known works, it was one of the last for me to sink my teeth into. I love Atwood's writing, she's so gifted at creating characters, and in this book her character creation is at it's peak. All the women are so perfectly fleshed out, so different from each other, and getting inside each of their heads is equally engaging. I loved the way the book moves between the women's past and present, showing all they've been through and the ways Zenia (an amazingly complex "bad guy") destroyed their lives. I finished the book in under two days, it was just that engaging. This is a beautiful story of the twists and turns of friendship, and in my opinion one of Atwood's best.

This book is definitely a tour-de-force. Atwood weaves together three entirely different narratives, all tied together by one factor; a protean Robber Bride, everchanging and everpresent. Three entirely different systems of imagery are used to represent the protagonists' perspectives, revealing their characters not only through their experiences but also in the way each sees the world.
I had a slight difficulty with the utter evil of Zenia -- why on earth would she want to slaughter an entire henhouse full of chickens? -- but aside from that, I loved this book. The prose is impeccable and better than Atwood's previous efforts, the imagery (as mentioned above) is superb, and despite Zenia's almost gothic evil, the characters (as well as the reader) find humour in the world around them. (see Roz's comment about "The Rubber Broad", for instance).

While the writing is wonderfully well done, at Atwood's usual high standards, I became quickly dissatisfied, then angry with her male characters. They are helpless 2-year-olds in a grown man's body, childishly selfish and childishly incapable of self-control. Far worse, they are not even expected to - "This is what men are," Atwood seems to be saying, "No-one can expect them to act differently. A set of big boobs walks by, and they fall into panting line behind them; a savvy woman would know either to blind the guy from the start, or not go places where big boobs might be - if anything happens, it's your own fault."

Worse, they are shallow 2-dimensional stereotypes: the intellectual West, whose creations (whose very name!) Tony secretly despises; the ignorant and lazy red-neck Billy; and the high-powered boorish lawyer Mitch, whose only saving grace appears to be making sure his suicide is faked well enough to appear an accident, so his life insurance can be collected.

Give me a break - the female characters get 4 dimensions (histories included), yet we are never given a reason that they would actually care about the male partners they have chosen. Notice I don't say "love" - Atwood throws in a few snapshots of affectionate moments, and apparently thinks this is ample reason for these very complex women to want to spend more than 15 minutes with these cardboard cutouts.

OK, more stereotypes - the lead female characters: intellectual Tony, whose pre-pubescent appearance/egghead non-sexually is a little extreme; hippie/New Age/space cadet Charis (who I liked the best); and financially successful fat-girl Roz (second-best).

As for the demonic, pneumatic, man-stealing bogie-monster Zenia? Did I say she has implants? Oh, yes, she wears high-heels. What guy could (or should) resist?

The writing is wonderful, the plot is good as far as it goes, the three main female characters walk around in a not-well-made cardboard movie set.

If you're in a man-hating phase, go for this book; if you want a good satisfying read, go elsewhere.

This book started off with a lot of questions which provided a great need to keep reading. However, once the end was achieved, there were still a lot of questions. Why did Zenia change her room for every visitor? What was the point of Larry's involvement? Did Zenia jump to her death? Zenia's real death at the end was perhaps the most disappointing element of this novel. Although, one redeeming quality was to see how much control she still had on all of the people in her past life... Great read for the summer...Just don't be looking for a book to deeply contemplate...This one will drive you nuts trying to figure out what all of Zenia's motives are...

I am a huge Margaret Atwood fan, first off. This book is slow and subtle, and while I wouldn't say it was great, it does have an appeal. I had a hard time getting through the first few chapters, but Atwood is so good at developing a level of depth to her characters that you become attached to them whether there's much of a plot or not. While it's not one of my favorites by this author, the book has her style, with vivid, delicious use of words to conjure up beautiful, lurid images in your mind while you read.

Atwood has created four very different women and joined them in a tangled story that explores the boundaries of friendship. Her characters almost breathe with life and the storytelling, as always, is excellent.

I was hesitating whether to give this book 2 or 3 stars. It's probably somewhere in between but I gave it the benefit of the doubt due to a few parts of the book that were actually intriguing. The biggest problem with this book is that I didn't care about the main characters. In the very beginning and throughout the entire book, I was always looking for Zenia's motives for hurting these women, but I never found any. Thus it seems weird that Zenia just came around to screw with these women and it makes the story seem insignificant. The book offers a history of each of the three characters Tony, Charis and Roz. Charis' background was the most interesting, but at the same time I was thinking to myself, "Why do I care about these characters' histories?". I was always waiting for a big payoff but it never comes, and the ending is a very farfetched disappointment. If you're looking to get in some Atwood, I suggest you read The Handmaid's Tale.

If there is one book that will convince you that you will never be able to write a novel, then I'm afraid this is it. The characters are well developed and the prose exemplory. Ms Atwood gets into the minds of her characters better than any other author I have ever read. And how very dark and frightening it all is. Not for the fainthearted.

The Robber Bride, the second book I have read by Margaret Atwood, explores the lives of three richly believable characters. The plot is part mystery, part romance, part coming-of-age tale mixed up with a tinge of feminist ideology and a lot of profound observations on North American (specifically, Canadian) life in the mid-late 20th century. I would describe the book as murder mystery meets Holly-go-Lightly meets First Wives' Club. An enchanted vixen comes into and sucks the men out of three women's lives. There's Tony, the female history professor, Charis, the new-age granola, and Roz, the powerhouse exec obsessed with all things material. Although the plot is entertaining, the characters make it work. You'll befriend (or possibly already know) these three women as if they were your personal Golden Girls.

This is the third Margaret Atwood book that I've read and, once again, Atwood fails to disappoint. Much like The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin, I simply could not put The Robber Bride down once I started reading it. The story of these four women is engaging, and is so multi-faceted that any reader would be able to relate.
The main flaw, as some other reviewers have previously noted, is that the characters seem all too stereotypical, and thus a little unreal. Charis is the delussioned hippie, Tony is the academic and Roz the busy career-woman. Perhaps Atwood selected these personas to show the universality of Zenia's "wrath" but each character seems to fit their respective stereotype to a T.
All in all though, this is an excellent book and well worth reading. Pass it on to your friends!

Since reading this book a few years ago, I have repeatedly thought back about it. This book and the complex relationships embedded in it have really stuck with me. I recommend this book to everyone I know who has interest in understanding the dynamics of female relationships. Truly my favorite book perhaps ever.

I liked this book because I found the story to be at once disturbing and intriguing. My main drawback, however, was the characters; all three of the main characters were extremely disappointing and irritating women. By the end of the book I found that I resented their stupidity and lack of intuition rather than sympathized with the extent to which their lives had been destroyed.

Oh no! This is simply an embarrassment! This book is nothing more than a silly romance novel masquerading as literature. Atwood is my favorite author but this book just supports my theory that she has "sold-out" to Hollywood (what a shameful movie The Handmaid's Tale was!) Don't bother with this mess. Read The Handmaid's Tale or Life Before Man or any other "early" Atwood. If you are an Atwood fan, don't embarrass her by reading this. Let's hope things turn around SOON.

Ms. Atwood knows how to craft a good story. The intensity comes from all the history. The main character is a historian, and it is from her that a lot of the true insights come from.
I must admit I skimmed a lot of the story. I am not interested in abused or used women or men, so their stories, while, my wife read them and liked the story more than I did, just were not worth my while to read thoroughly. It was, however a truly interesting book. I liked what she wrote about history, it has no beginning or end, just arbitrarily given starting and end points. For us normal people, our personal history is so really there, we can not avoid it, trauma or not, even the death of perpetrators does not make it go away, we will remember for the rest of our lives our history.
The story is set in Toronto, Canada. Three girls attend college and live in the same dorm, in the mid sixties. At that time only one, Tony, knows Zenia well. The others know of her and, later, get to know her as well as Tony, for the same reason. Zenia is bad news for these three girls.
The story is mixed with the histories of each of the girls getting her turn to remember their past and into the present. This where you hear of the abuse and sadness each has suffered and where I could just scream at them, "Take a chance!! Do something for yourself!!" But, hey, I am not there going through what they are (even they are not there, this is fiction), so I do not feel right in correcting them. It is hard to say that I would truly act any differently, but I do not have to read it throughly.

Margaret Atwood's gorgeous books are as textured as her poetry. When you read her novels, you become so immersed in them, you feel as if you could reach out and trace the artful writing with your fingertips, and feel the patterns that shift beneath. THE ROBBER BRIDE is a perfect example of this. Each chapter is a dream so real, you shake yourself to return from the gripping story to a world that seems flat. The story about how women react to each other, and to the men in their lives seems secondary to the amazingly strong, multi-faceted, almost unknowable women themselves. This is a book to read and re-read, each time discovering new and wonderful worlds just simmering beneath the surface of the page.

I really enjoyed this novel (Atwood's wordplay is intoxicating), but I did find myself becoming a bit annoyed with the 'protagonists' toward the end-as they became much less real to me. I actually found myself rooting for Zenia. No American woman would have ever put up with the hell she put Charis, Roz, and Tony through. Well, an American woman never would have been gullible enough to fall for her over-the-top ruses, manipulations, and abuse in the first place. (Oh no-did I sound too much like Z. just then . . . ?)

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood is the story of four women who met in college. Tony is a war obsessed professor who really enjoys spelling things backwards. Roz is a powerful, business savvy, college president. Charis is the new-age, disorganized, aura seeing health nut. Despite their disparate characters they are all brought together because of a common foe, the fourth college student, Zenia: the beautiful, manipulative stealer of husbands.

After Zenia dies they remain steadfast friends and, though they refuse to discuss her, they are all still haunted by her ghost. So they are not all that surprised when one day as they are having their special friend lunch Zenia walks into the restaurant, very much alive and well. They are now older and hopefully wiser, at least wise enough to outwit Zenia and her evil plans this time around.

If I had to choose one word to describe this book it would be: Annoying.

The way it was organized? Annoying. First we read about a particular morning from Tony's point of view. Then we repeat this for Charis. And once more for Roz. Each point of view reveals things about their pasts with Zenia. In theory, I like the approach, but in practice it was boring and didn't go much of anywhere, repeating the same things over and over, moving the story along at a slug's pace.

Character Development? Annoying. The author decided to give each character certain characteristics and then won't shut up about it. Each sentence harps on it. For example, Tony is a very petite person. So we get to hear about her height with every other sentence. Her feet don't touch the ground in the chair she's sitting in. Her tiny teeth chew into a hamburger. The same goes for the other characters. We continually hear about how Roz is big-boned and a guilty Catholic. Charis is a bumbling fool who gardens and eats gross health food crap. If we mentioned all of these characteristics only once (because that's all it takes!) and edited out the rest, this book would have been cut by 75%.

The characters themselves? Annoying. Everything I dislike they had. Weak, dumb, insecure, boring, naive. And let's not forget Roz's assistant who only speaks in famous quotes. If it were me in this book, instead of Zenia, I would not have just stolen husbands. I would have murdered each and every one of them.

The writing style? Annoying and comprised almost entirely of clichés. Here's a snippet of one exchange:

"You stacked the deck," says Roz.
"Oh please," says Zenia. "It takes two to tango..."

Here's some more!

"... she thought she was going to melt like a warm popsicle.."
"... nobody should be allowed out in public looking like that, it might cause car crashes..."

At times my chest would begin to tighten with anxiety as I felt myself getting progressively dumber with each word I read further into the book.

And the story itself? Annoying. It started off lame. It ended lame. Everything in between was pure torture.

I really enjoyed this book. Never having read anything by Margaret Atwood, and just picking this off the shelf at the library, I was thrilled with her excellent writing style, unique plot, and wonderful character development. I recommend this novel for a great read.

A chillingly honest look at interpersonal relationships. Intrique and callousness equally shared by the male and female characters. Thoroughly entertaining and impossible to put away. Carried the story with me for days after finishing the last page

Margaret Atwood is a magnificent novelist. This book intrigues you at every turn. I was in a spell as I read it. You could say she "robbed" me. It is a must read book. Look into it and see Zenia inside yourself.

I've been a fan of Margaret Atwood's work for many years so I was expecting another good read when I started this book. It's hard to believe this is written by the same author in comparison to some of her earlier novels. SLOW paced, excessive and trivial details, characters that are predictable and just plain boring....I finished this book but only to see if it got any better along the way. It didn't. Don't waste your time on this one.

Mildly entertaining but too predictable, not charming, I skipped through some pages that droned on. There were some very enjoyable segments. This is a book my wife might prefer to read but not enjoy afterwards. Had a common, liberal, anti-male feel to it.

I just had a hard time getting into this book. While I felt simpathy for the characters, I didn't really like them. They didn't interest me. The writing was really good but the story itself just made it difficult to finish.

Margaret Atwood is a cut above the rest. "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Alias Grace" were unique and gripping works of fiction with characteristic traces of Atwood's element of science fiction/fantasy. This book, however, was very disappointing. It ambled on and on, and although Atwood shows off her exceptional talent through a diverse range of character portrayal, the plot left much to be desired. Don't bother.

This was my first introduction to Margaret Atwood and I've become a huge fan since reading this and her other works. The book starts with all the main characters feeling itense fear/envy/spite for a woman named Zenia. I found myself wondering how the author could possibly fill in the backstory to explain these vituperous emotions. Did Atwood deliver? Yes, she certainly did. I felt the same range of emotions for Zenia as I learned more about her in the book.

All the women in this novel are survivors, they are the strong responsible ones in their relationships. The men are weak, driven by their lust and blinded by the lies of women. The final lesson of the novel is about the triumph of women, and it's well worth the journey to arrive there. This book comes highly recommended.

It's been a while since I read this but I just had to comment. This was the first book I read after my husband left me for another woman. It was beautiful and touching and it was uncanny how well Atwood described everything that I was feeling - at times, it took my breath away. If you've never been there...read this and learn from it.

This is one of the best books I've ever read. Margaret Atwood's writing style never ceases to amaze me, and the intelligence that comes through is astounding. Any woman can relate to one of the four main characters in the book. Highly recommend this book to everyone!

Well, Atwood's certainly done it again. I couldn't get over how thoroughly each character was painted...fascinating. One particularly poignant moment in the novel that readers will surely recognize is when Tony is describing her childhood foibles with her mother. Tony has always had a habit of saying words backwards in her mind (even as a child). So...one day when her mother takes her tobogganing at Riverdale, Tony is too scared to get on the sleigh, so her valiant mother demonstrates, and ends up heading full steam down the hill, approaching a cluster of trees. As this is happening, Tony says out loud, "No, No!" but inside she is saying, "On, On!" Hilarious...

I was a big fan of Margaret Atwood, but after suffering through this atrocity of a novel I feel cheated. I have wasted 4 days of my life reading this unnecessarily loooooong novel. Margaret, are you going through late life crisis? This book is like a cheap soap opera. You used to respect women.
Three middle aged women chosen to be victims crying wolf the whole time.
Don't waste your time reading this meaningless drivel.

It really bothered me that it was written third person present. "She looks in the mirror" "Tony sets down her pen"

If a book doesn't grab my attention by the end of the first chapter, I'm done, but the chapters were so short that I read through chapter 2. It was as if the story was told through such an impersonal narrator that I couldn't connect.

Margaret Atwood is one of those authors that I read and then wonder, why haven't I read all of her books!!! The Robber Bride is on that I had not read until recently and I find myself wondering, once again, why haven't I read all of her books by now.

No two novels ever have the same feel, except for when she is writing them that way, like the MaddAdam trilogy. Each book has a unique viewpoint, story and themes and the writing is always so wonderful that once you pick up a book, you don't want to put it down. To say that she has a way with words, that would be an understatement. In the Robber Bride, we meet three very different women whose lives have been shaped by a fourth woman, a destructive force who blows in with the face of a friend. I think we all have experience with this, and that's what makes it all the more compelling to read. The complex characters come alive on the page and their sorrow is your sorrow and their happiness bleeds over as your happiness. There are very few writers who create this sort of connection. Her understanding of people, and how the very worst of it can come out, but also how the very best will shine through, is apparent in this novel.

In short....read this. You won't regret it.

Several people have written short synopsis' of this book, so I won't do that. I'll just say, it's been a long time since I've read a book that I couldn't put down -- which was (happily) the case with this book. I'd tell myself "just one more chapter" then end up reading until 2:00 AM or later. I loved the characters and the wonderful descriptive passages. There were also several humorous passages or phrases that made me laugh out loud. This was such a memorable books that I was almost sad to finish it because I wanted to find out more about the characters. I find myself recommending this book to all my women friends because I enjoyed it so much. Now I am anxious to read some other books by Margaret Atwood.