The Robber Bride

Margaret Atwood is well-known for her dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale which I read while in college but was super bored with it that now I do not remember much about the story except that it's about women who are forced into social engineering under a dictatorship. I must thank my friends at the literature forum I joined in college. Finding like-minded friends was very difficult so I turned to online forums to seek out people who love to read and who discuss literature in a very intelligent manner. It was thanks to some people I've become close to there that I started to read up on dystopia.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that in 2009 I would not have a second thought about buying The Robber Bride, and at only PHP35 it was a very cheap bargain. And like Riven Rock, this fiction will happily land in someone's lap and I hope whoever it is will ponder about this book many times just as I did.

My copy had this card with impressionist painting...

And inside is a note... the card is most likely from Canada because Pierre Belvedere is in that country as per a quick Google search

The Robber Bride tells the story of three friends with very different personalities and interests but who come together because of a common frenemy named Zenia, a woman who for them is the very personification of pure evil. Tony, Charis/Karen, and Roz knew each other from college but were not close at that time until Zenia entered each of their lives to ruin each woman's relationship with their men. War nerd and palindrome addict Tony married her best friend West who was so manipulated by Zenia but when the evil woman reappeared in their lives later on, West left Tony for Zenia. Tony was aloof and West and Zenia became her most intimate friends in college so Tony shared her personal stories like how her mother left her and her father one day. She also wrote a history paper for Zenia, feeling sorry for her many struggles in life. In the end during the confrontation after discovering Zenia faked her death, Zenia tried to blackmail her again by threatening to expose Tony's academic dishonesty and undermine the latter's teaching credibility, but Tony just walked away.

Of the three friends, I feel the most sorry for Charis/Karen. Her mother seemed to have some sort of mental illness thus Karen grew up a battered child. She eventually came to live with her grandmother and later on with her aunt and her husband who sexually abused her. The uncle also robbed her of her inheritance, a small amount she got after her grandmother's death, but she was able to recuperate it in the end and filed a case against her uncle. Charis, which Karen has come to be known, was a new age spiritualist whose superior empathy made her a perfect target for Zenia who came to live with her and her partner Billy and eventually succeeded in seducing Billy to go away with her. Zenia faked having a grave illness and Charis took extra care of her, which was very very sweet, yet the ungrateful Zenia really had to make a fool out of her. During the confrontation, Zenia told Charis that it was Billy who killed her two chickens that day they decided to leave Charis.

Roz came from a humble background. Her mother leased space to boarders in their house and was a very hardworking woman. Her father was first introduced as a special agent during the war but eventually Roz learned from her dad's friends that these men were actually looters and part of an underground group. Roz eventually had an affluent life thanks to her father's illicit activities. She married a lawyer named Mitch whom Zenia seduced and the two ran away together. Zenia then took cheques signed by Mitch and disappeared, leaving Mitch hunting for her until he met his death in the yacht. During the confrontation, Zenia threatened to expose Roz's son Larry as being a drug pusher and asked for a sum of money. Roz almost gave in to protect her son but she consulted with her friends and was spared being fooled again. 

So after each confrontation, the three decided to go back to the hotel but learned that Zenia died. She was seen to be floating in the fountain, most likely having fallen from her room above.

Atwood's writing style is boring, but her story is very interesting. I lost count of the number of times I cursed in my mind because she wrote so many descriptions of the settings and there is very little action in the stories. I had to be extra patient until I get to the point where Tony and Zenia began sharing stories and that was when things got very interesting. Zenia's life holds the most interest and even at the end the reader is left wondering what is Zenia's real life story, is there any grain of truth in what she tells the three friends, that she just saved them all from terrible men. Well to give her credit, I personally think that if a man is weak enough to be seduced by another woman and betray his supposed "love", then a woman is better off without him. However, Zenia seems to be a very powerful manipulative woman who can wreak havoc on even the sweetest person's life and this fact is enough to prove that she is pure evil personified.

If there is one character I would have loved to be given more role, it is Boyce. So it's no secret that I have been following Stratford Festival and I was surprised to find in their videos that Atwood is actually a fan of Shakespeare. (Okay, I know I shouldn't be surprised because as I recently discovered, The Bard's claim to fame is very legitimate, no questions asked. But maybe I just find it super awesome that the books I read and the plays I watch recently all are connected in one way or the other. Like, Caille Millner's The Golden Road, T. C. Boyle's Riven Rock, and now Atwood's The Robber Bride... the one thing in common is they show immigrants' determination and will in making their dreams come true in North America.) So anyway, back to Boyce. I find him a funny guy, someone I'd like to converse with because of his witty lines and he quotes great poets like Shakespeare, Blake, and even Stevie Smith. While Roz was learning about Larry being gay, there is a funny moment wherein Boyce quoted Smith and Larry told him to shut up. 

I just wished I read this way back in 2009 so I would know how to handle manipulative and evil people. But oh well, I was able to overcome those terrible moments and it's never too late to learn something about human nature. Then again, had I read this at a younger age, I would have saved myself from many heartaches.