The Robber Bride

Published in 1993 and set in Toronto, three women, Tony, Charis, and Roz, are good friends who met in college. Tony becomes a professor of history, Charis is a free spirit teaching yoga, and Roz is a successful businesswoman. Villainess, Zenia, plays on the sympathies of the three women. She lies, connives, and manipulates these women, toying with them and the men they love. She wreaks havoc in their lives.

It is told in three alternating segments in flashback, one for each protagonist, and the three storylines converge in the end. There are many complexities at work in this novel. Zenia exhibits many of the traits of a psychopath (though the term is not used). She is an expert at exploiting vulnerabilities. The women repeatedly give show more her the benefit of the doubt, trusting her when they should avoid her. There are many references to fairy tales, which provides additional food for thought.

The three main female characters support each other through traumatic times. They keep expecting Zenia to turn into a better person, or act in the same manner as they do. It definitely contains feminist themes. Zenia displays several traits they accept from the men in their lives, which begs the question as to why they have differing expectations of men and women. It examines the idea that positive change can be ignited through negative experiences. I found it darkly fascinating. I am sure it could be the basis for lively discussion in a book group.

4.5 show less

Love love love this book. It's a story about a three women and their men being stolen by another woman, the Robber Bride. At base level, it appears that the main villain and antagonist of the story is Zenia since she comes into Roz, Tony, and Charis' lives and blows them apart by taking their boyfriends/husbands. And while Zenia certainly is what she appears to be, the faults of the men in this story can certainly not be overlooked. They are pathetic and one-dimensional and somehow turn these amazing and interesting women into shells of themselves. Roz, Tony, and Charis are unique and fascinating characters that seem to fold themselves into little women and wives just to make a man happy. I found myself wanting to shake them by the show more shoulders and yell that they are so much better than this and that they shouldn't give up their lives and very sense of being for such dolts of men.

In conclusion, this book made me never want to love a man in my life. Please read, it might ruin your life! show less

A view of femme fatality from the point of view of the women whose lives she overturns. A scathing condemnation of homewrecking that manages not to be shrill or wholly accusatory. All of the women in the story all whole beings, flaws and strengths and all. Bernadette Dunne makes what could be a very difficult listen (there is a character who frequently thinks to herself in inverted words and phrases) seem quite natural and melifluous.

This isn't the type of book I generally read, but it had the attraction of apparently being based upon a Grimm's fairy tale, although it seems not closely, and with the twist that the original was the Robber Bridegroom, a man who literally ate his young brides. In this, Zenia is a femme fatale, a 'man eater' who preys upon men in order to enrich herself financially, but more importantly, to inflict misery on their wives and girlfriends out of sheer spite.

The story opens with three women who believe that Zenia, who deceived them all and lured away their partners - though in Tony's case he did eventually come back - is now dead. They are horrified when she walks into a restaurant while they are eating lunch. Then we go back in time with show more each character in turn, not only to learn how she met Zenia and how Zenia - more a mythic force of evil than a real woman - wrecked havoc in the character's life, but ultimately back through that character's life to her childhood where we see what moulded her. Zenia is a pathological liar who takes on exactly the persona needed, in each case, to prey on her victim's weakness. It's as if Zenia intuitively picks up on the hurts of the other woman's childhood.

One important aspect of this story is the time in which it is set: 1991. All three women are now middle aged, two with grown children. The only one who has managed to 'keep' her man is Tony, and her wimpish husband West is almost a surrogate child, whereas the other two are really better off without the men in question - one a serial philanderer who, although a succesful lawyer, seems to have sponged off his wife Roz's greater wealth, and the other a lazy freeloader and draft dodger. The women are devastated by their other halves' infidelity with Zenia which is more hurtful than their financial losses, and only Roz is hard nosed enough to not take her husband back when she sees he is still besotted and would go after Zenia again like a shot. However she still suffers massively from hurt and guilt to the point of blaming herself and taking pills and booze which land her in hospital when he commits suicide.

All three women come over by today's standards as going to incredible lengths to kowtow to the men and keep unpleasant truths away from them, such as Zenia's blackmailing of Tony, and the men all have an infantile character (apart from a super-efficient male assistant of Roz's who turns out to be gay), but as they had grown up in the 1950s, this is not altogether suprising, and the next generation, in the shape of Roz's and Charis' daughters, are much more clued up and fearless. Zenia herself remains a mystery to the end, but this seems to be the writer's intention as she is really a force of nature rather than a human being. The most positive element of the story is the strong and supportive friendship that the three women show each other, which remains their deepest and most stable relationship, given the tension between the two mothers and their offspring. show less

Three friends meet for lunch after the recent death of a powerful figure in each of their pasts. Tony, Roz, and Charis are all very different but they have bonded over the damage that has been done to each of them by a mysterious femme fatale known as Zenia. They are just sitting down to lunch when they are all struck dumb by the shocking appearance of Zenia in the restaurant. It's clear that she has faked her own death and come back to take even more from them.

From there follows three flashbacks where we learn what Zenia has done to each of the three friends. Each time the story is the same, Zenia enters dramatically into their lives. She gains their friendship by feigning similar interests, she gains their sympathy through an show more audacious sob-story, and then she makes off in the night with everything they love and value.

Each woman is struck by renewed paranoia about what secrets of theirs Zenia has obtained. What will she take from them this time? But many years have passed and they are all stronger than the last time their paths crossed. They each must screw up their courage and confront this specter if they are ever to be free of her dark power.

A haunting novel about friendship, love, secrets and betrayal. show less

Four women, who first met at university in the sixties, each have a run-in with a fifth woman, Zenia. But that’s all behind them, since Zenia apparently died in a terrorist bomb, and her depradations actually brought them together as friends, even though they sort of knew each other back in university… And then a woman walks into the coffee shop where the four have met for their weekly lunch, and they all recognise her: Zenia. The novel then takes each of the four women in turn, and tells their stories and how Zenia entered their lives and the damage she caused. There are, it sometimes seems to me, two Margaret Atwoods. There are the novels written by one Atwood, where the ideas are really good but the prose never really shines; and show more there’s the other Atwood, whose prose is beautifully put together and a joy to read. I’d say Oryx and Crake was by the first Atwood, and Alias Grace by the second. The Robber Bride is also by the second. I’ve not enjoyed, and been so impressed on a sentence-by-sentence level, by an Atwood novel since reading, well, Alias Grace. This is easily her second-best work. I have by no means read her entire oeuvre, although I do plan to work by way through it. But of those I’ve read so far, I’d put The Robber Bride second after Alias Grace (and yes, above The Handmaid’s Tale). show less

Published in 1993 and set in Toronto, three women, Tony, Charis, and Roz, are good friends who met in college. Tony becomes a professor of history, Charis is a free spirit teaching yoga, and Roz is a successful businesswoman. Villainess, Zenia, plays on the sympathies of the three women. She lies, connives, and manipulates these women, toying with them and the men they love. She wreaks havoc in their lives.

It is told in three alternating segments in flashback, one for each protagonist, and the three storylines converge in the end. There are many complexities at work in this novel. Zenia exhibits many of the traits of a psychopath (though the term is not used). She is an expert at exploiting vulnerabilities. The women repeatedly give show more her the benefit of the doubt, trusting her when they should avoid her. There are many references to fairy tales, which provides additional food for thought.

The three main female characters support each other through traumatic times. They keep expecting Zenia to turn into a better person, or act in the same manner as they do. It definitely contains feminist themes. Zenia displays several traits they accept from the men in their lives, which begs the question as to why they have differing expectations of men and women. It examines the idea that positive change can be ignited through negative experiences. I found it darkly fascinating. I am sure it could be the basis for lively discussion in a book group.

4.5 show less