The Robber Bride

Not my favourite by her, but Atwood is Atwood and that signature style is here. Got me out of a reading slump.

I couldn't put this down. It felt so honest in some ways - people bringing out the worst in each other, and the inability to tell fact from fiction in Zenia's stories. I might have to digest it before writing a proper review.

I mostly enjoyed the backstories of Tony, Charis, and Roz. What I did not like as much, was unnecessary topics being dragged out, or brought up at all in the first place. This could've been 100-150 pages shorter. The last chapter, "The Outcome", told me absolutely nothing for example. So much unnecessary detail scattered throughout, I definitely did not need several pages about Tony's sand map. Also, and I know this is the point of the book. But its so hard to believe what fools the three women were in regards to Zenia. Seriously? And they celebrate her at the end? I don't get that at all!

What a bad ass femme fatale.

The Robber Bride was first recommended to me over a decade ago by a co-worker when I mentioned how much I loved other books by Margaret Atwood. The title resided somewhere in my brain in the years that followed and when I came across it in a used bookstore I snatched it up. And there is sat, unread on my bookshelf (as so many books I’m excited to read often do) for a few more years. Until the day, not long ago, when the book gods choose to strike me with the intention to actually read it. Finally. All this to say, I might have had too high of expectations, literal years of buildup, to fully appreciate this novel. The Robber Bride is an updated take on the fairytale of The Robber Bridegroom that switches out the male antagonist that lures maidens to their death for a femme fatale who terrorizes our three main characters over decades, charming them and stealing away the things they love most – mainly their men. As with all Atwood work, it’s beautifully written and backstories of the three protagonists – Tony, Charis and Roz – are wonderfully complex and fascinating. Ultimately though, the most interesting character, from which the title comes, is Zenia and for obvious reasons she remains elusive. Or maybe that’s what makes her so interesting. Reading this novel 28 years after it was published, it’s difficult to parse out what part of the retrograde feminism was intentional and which parts are simply, at this point, retrograde. Given that Atwood is a feminist icon, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that the men obsessed characters, who sacrifice so much for men who do not so little, is a comment on the type of ingrained cultural expectations women born in the 40s would naturally have, no matter how smart or accomplished they became. The pacing was also an issue; it takes over 100 pages to get past one morning told by all three perspectives and I felt it could have been more concise overall: a lot of repetitious descriptions.