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A review by thisotherbookaccount
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
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.