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3.8 AVERAGE
3.8 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have loved every other Margaret Atwood book I've read, but this was just dull. Only forced myself to finish it because it was for a book club. The plot was boring, the characters equally so, and I honestly didn't care what happened.
I think i got the symbolism. Women can be as evil as men, but what do we call them? Do women still feel a bond for each other, still do the nicities even after someone screws them over? I still don't really get the end. I wanted to know the secrets, but they are never divulged. Felt like the ending was not satisfying.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I gave Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride a fair shot. Unfortunately, I am going to have to put it down about 400 pages into a 500+ page book. This is also going to be the first time I give up on an Atwood book. It is going to happen, sooner or later, with the books of your favourite author, so I suppose this, too, is inevitable. It doesn't make me feel any better about it, but that's that.
The Robber Bride has an incredible hook: three women with three distinct personalities have a shared history with a fourth named Zenia, the main antagonist of the story. Zenia is like a tornado, coming in at different points of the three women's lives to ruin things and take something away. And because of this shared hatred for a woman, the three of them gather at a bar once every month to maintain this tenuous friendship. That is, of course, until Zenia strolls into that very bar one day, dragging back all the horrific memories of the past.
This book has an unconventional structure. It opens with the three women seeing Zenia at the bar, then breaks away into three roughly 100-page chapters about each of the three women's pasts. Most of the page count are devoted to the backstories of these women. Instead of focusing on Zenia herself, who plays a small yet significant role, the chapters are usually about where the women grew up, who they grew up with, the hardships in their lives, the people they meet along the way, etc. Zenia only really appears for a page or two before the narrative veers back to even more backstories.
I must admit, after reading about 250 pages of this, it quickly became tedious. You learn next to nothing about Zenia and, most importantly, her motives. In fact, based on reviews and summaries of the book online, readers don't get answers even at the end of the book. Without a plausible motive, it just feels like Zenia is being a villain for its sake. Personality-wise, it is even harder to get with Zenia as a character, because she lies to the other three women all the time. Zenia, then, becomes this detached, mythical creature that I personally find to be hard to relate to.
As for the three protagonists, it is difficult to believe just how gullible they are. It is difficult to sustain my interest with the main characters if all of them show a complete lack of awareness and common sense. Like, if you are stupid enough to fall for Zenia's tricks, then maybe you deserve the kind of things that befall you.
Now, if this book had devoted more time to the revenge aspect of the story, maybe I would have soldiered on. However, at this stage of the book, I simply cannot be bothered to find out what happens next.
The Robber Bride has an incredible hook: three women with three distinct personalities have a shared history with a fourth named Zenia, the main antagonist of the story. Zenia is like a tornado, coming in at different points of the three women's lives to ruin things and take something away. And because of this shared hatred for a woman, the three of them gather at a bar once every month to maintain this tenuous friendship. That is, of course, until Zenia strolls into that very bar one day, dragging back all the horrific memories of the past.
This book has an unconventional structure. It opens with the three women seeing Zenia at the bar, then breaks away into three roughly 100-page chapters about each of the three women's pasts. Most of the page count are devoted to the backstories of these women. Instead of focusing on Zenia herself, who plays a small yet significant role, the chapters are usually about where the women grew up, who they grew up with, the hardships in their lives, the people they meet along the way, etc. Zenia only really appears for a page or two before the narrative veers back to even more backstories.
I must admit, after reading about 250 pages of this, it quickly became tedious. You learn next to nothing about Zenia and, most importantly, her motives. In fact, based on reviews and summaries of the book online, readers don't get answers even at the end of the book. Without a plausible motive, it just feels like Zenia is being a villain for its sake. Personality-wise, it is even harder to get with Zenia as a character, because she lies to the other three women all the time. Zenia, then, becomes this detached, mythical creature that I personally find to be hard to relate to.
As for the three protagonists, it is difficult to believe just how gullible they are. It is difficult to sustain my interest with the main characters if all of them show a complete lack of awareness and common sense. Like, if you are stupid enough to fall for Zenia's tricks, then maybe you deserve the kind of things that befall you.
Now, if this book had devoted more time to the revenge aspect of the story, maybe I would have soldiered on. However, at this stage of the book, I simply cannot be bothered to find out what happens next.
It's books like these that makes my rarely flouted 'always finish' rule earn its keep, for it often takes going through the entirety of any work for the meshing gears of personal reception to reveal themselves to my own perception. Granted, it didn't do a very good job of serving as inspiration for one of my more creative frenzies, but it was a decent whetting stone for my analytic ability without pissing me off too much, so reading it in tandem with [b:The Second Sex|457264|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327978178s/457264.jpg|879666] was not such a horrible mistake after all. Reading the works simultaneously definitely negatively affected my evaluation of this one, but the work was mildly entertaining when I wasn't hell bent on deconstructing it to its most basic of constituents, which counts for something.
I will admit, I went into this looking for the Atwood of [b:The Handmaid's Tale|38447|The Handmaid's Tale|Margaret Atwood|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1294702760s/38447.jpg|1119185], but never fear, I found better reasons for my tepid reaction than thwarted expectations. One of these is a simple mechanic of any sort of fiction, in that most of if not all of its success with an audience lies in its talents for deception, suspension of disbelief if you will for folks keen on key terminology. In Handmaid's Tale, I was astounded by the powerful usage of metaphor in all its macabre forms, enough to feel threatened by these clusters of ink lying limply spread over dead white plains. Thus I was emotionally invested enough with this story to not care about whatever contrivances of plot, character, and other components of fiction the author chose to utilize in crafting their work.
This book did not pull that off. While I'll admit to finding bits and pieces of it interesting and/or amusing, the emotional pull was not enough to distract me from seeing it as a collection of stereotypes that happened to resonate with my own personal characteristics. Seeing as how this is how most fiction is generated and how I have not yet sworn off of stories completely despite my rapid intake, I wondered what else was off.
This is where The Second Sex comes in and all of its wonderful analysis of woman and all of her facets, including a large section on the figure in fiction and the popular consigning of her to the category of 'mystery'. It turns out that this is a major pet peeve of mine, and without my knowing at the time was a theme that bugged me during my reading of [b:Rebecca|12873|Rebecca|Daphne du Maurier|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327871977s/12873.jpg|46663]. What both that book and this have in common is the subsuming of the entire story in the viewpoint(s) of one or many female characters, one which looks out on a world from a perspective well-adjusted to the expectations of men and woman, and finds within its gaze a female who chooses to break these ideological standards and use them as tools for her own gain. Both of these females provide the only sense of plot advancement, as well as the only truly uniqueness of character, a source of unknown and mysterious complexity in the world of The Robber Bride where the women coddle in silent suffering their hapless men and innocently wondrous children.
Admittedly, there are only three women to view the world from, but all three seemed extremely predictable in their thought patterns, as if nature did nothing but grant selves well-adjusted to the current state of society's expectations of the female role and left nurturing to fill in the quirks that would differentiate them from everyone else. All this building up of all too easily explained characters, while the most interesting is left to wallow as an unfathomable conundrum. A mark of laziness, in my mind. Oh, and the only decent males who don't fall into the 'hell hath no fury like a man offended' category are gay. Go figure.
In conclusion, I may have issues with well-adjusted characters in general, and should just come to grips with the fact that not everyone is going to care about the bigger picture in context with their own lives, and as a result are perfectly happy going along with a preconceived toolbox that is never truly pushed into civil war. That doesn't diminish the fact that nothing distracted me from focusing so much on the more unsatisfying aspects of the story. Not the imagery, not the plot, no deep insight into the human condition, no novel ways of conveying information that sometimes result in a faint feeling of omniscience and more often in a migraine, not even overwhelming bleakness that leaves me rocking in the corner in states that I really should be more careful about. Nadda. Just a few traces of entertainment and a bit more knowledge about Canada and various historical conflicts. And more experience with analyzing gender stereotypes, I suppose. That's always useful.
I will admit, I went into this looking for the Atwood of [b:The Handmaid's Tale|38447|The Handmaid's Tale|Margaret Atwood|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1294702760s/38447.jpg|1119185], but never fear, I found better reasons for my tepid reaction than thwarted expectations. One of these is a simple mechanic of any sort of fiction, in that most of if not all of its success with an audience lies in its talents for deception, suspension of disbelief if you will for folks keen on key terminology. In Handmaid's Tale, I was astounded by the powerful usage of metaphor in all its macabre forms, enough to feel threatened by these clusters of ink lying limply spread over dead white plains. Thus I was emotionally invested enough with this story to not care about whatever contrivances of plot, character, and other components of fiction the author chose to utilize in crafting their work.
This book did not pull that off. While I'll admit to finding bits and pieces of it interesting and/or amusing, the emotional pull was not enough to distract me from seeing it as a collection of stereotypes that happened to resonate with my own personal characteristics. Seeing as how this is how most fiction is generated and how I have not yet sworn off of stories completely despite my rapid intake, I wondered what else was off.
This is where The Second Sex comes in and all of its wonderful analysis of woman and all of her facets, including a large section on the figure in fiction and the popular consigning of her to the category of 'mystery'. It turns out that this is a major pet peeve of mine, and without my knowing at the time was a theme that bugged me during my reading of [b:Rebecca|12873|Rebecca|Daphne du Maurier|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327871977s/12873.jpg|46663]. What both that book and this have in common is the subsuming of the entire story in the viewpoint(s) of one or many female characters, one which looks out on a world from a perspective well-adjusted to the expectations of men and woman, and finds within its gaze a female who chooses to break these ideological standards and use them as tools for her own gain. Both of these females provide the only sense of plot advancement, as well as the only truly uniqueness of character, a source of unknown and mysterious complexity in the world of The Robber Bride where the women coddle in silent suffering their hapless men and innocently wondrous children.
Admittedly, there are only three women to view the world from, but all three seemed extremely predictable in their thought patterns, as if nature did nothing but grant selves well-adjusted to the current state of society's expectations of the female role and left nurturing to fill in the quirks that would differentiate them from everyone else. All this building up of all too easily explained characters, while the most interesting is left to wallow as an unfathomable conundrum. A mark of laziness, in my mind. Oh, and the only decent males who don't fall into the 'hell hath no fury like a man offended' category are gay. Go figure.
In conclusion, I may have issues with well-adjusted characters in general, and should just come to grips with the fact that not everyone is going to care about the bigger picture in context with their own lives, and as a result are perfectly happy going along with a preconceived toolbox that is never truly pushed into civil war. That doesn't diminish the fact that nothing distracted me from focusing so much on the more unsatisfying aspects of the story. Not the imagery, not the plot, no deep insight into the human condition, no novel ways of conveying information that sometimes result in a faint feeling of omniscience and more often in a migraine, not even overwhelming bleakness that leaves me rocking in the corner in states that I really should be more careful about. Nadda. Just a few traces of entertainment and a bit more knowledge about Canada and various historical conflicts. And more experience with analyzing gender stereotypes, I suppose. That's always useful.
This was my second Margaret Atwood book. I definitely enjoyed it. Zenia is an evil force of a woman who manages to wreck havoc on three of her friends' lives. And we learn why in all the character development. I enjoyed Atwood's writing style and was glad I read this one. There were times though where I felt I was lumbering along trying to move the book a bit quicker, but overall, a good read.
Interesting plot, but then became extremely repetitive. Then plain boring for another 400 pages. But then, right at the end…it became near impossible to finish.
mysterious
slow-paced