I’m on a Margaret Atwood bender; I ought to break it up really but her writing is just so rich and addictive.
Publication date: September 1993
Genre: Novel
Format: Audio book read by Bernadette Dunne
Zenia is beautiful, smart and greedy, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless; a man’s dream and a woman”s nightmare. She is also dead. Just to make sure Tony, Roz and Charis are there for the funeral. But five years on, as the three women share an indulgent, sisterly lunch, the unthinkable happens; ‘with waves of ill will flowing out of her like cosmic radiation’, Zenia is back…
FIRST IMPRESSIONS || The Robber bride is an earlier novel than Oryx and Crake though not so early as the likes of The Handmaid’s tale and it fits interestingly with the rest of Atwood’s repertoire. It’s a The first chapter begins with a lot of foreshadowing around the character of Zenia wrapped up in what read, to me, like a Sex and the City voice over. I could definitely imagine a book group discussion along the lines of: “are you a Tony, a Charis or a Roz?”
CHARACTERS || All three of the women were sharply drawn, each unique, flawed, damaged, strong, and vulnerable but in vastly different ways. Roz is outwardly fierce, a loud and shapely business woman with insecurities, a consumerist bent and a sympathetic tone. Tony is the most pragmatic of the three, with a logical, straight-to-the-point perspective on life. Charis, the re-born version of Karen, sees energy and is an emotionally complex and outwardly vacant lover of living things. They’re very relatable. Having various chapters told from various perspectives fills out their characters wonderfully because the reader is able to see not only how they think but also how this is perceived.
With Zenia there is no apparent thought process. Everything we know about Zenia is told through the perception of our three rag-tag female friends – and they don’t have much good to say about her. She is a destructive, malicious and unscrupulous force. The perspective is, I think, what makes her such an enigma, so mysterious, and such a cunning villain.There’s a passage that explores the potential etymology of Zenia’s name which I found to be the perfect demonstration of how little anyone knew about her character. There’s even uncertainty about her real name. The enigmatic Zenia is painted as a demon but, in a crucial and poignant contrast, turns out to be just human.
MEANINGS || Atwood’s take on female relationships is multifaceted. She takes the typical ‘women betrayed by men with other women’ trope and then adds ‘women betrayed by another woman’ but also finds time to show ‘women finding support and acceptance with other women’. Zenia binds the other three and, fundamentally, is the catalyst for their support system and friendship. Men, on the other-hand, are painted as decidedly pathetic at the mercy of womenkind. It’s a really tough one to pin down – like much of the book, the meaning of the story is open to conjecture. Atwood utilises that wonderful bookish trend of leaving a hundred unanswered questions, of leaving the reader to decide for themselves what took place within the pages.
The impact of childhood experiences plays a part in the story as we learn more about each of the women and how they came to be where they are when we meet them. Everyone has battle scars and the visceral telling of the ladies’ early lives was powerful, moving and upsetting. It also served to explain that people tend to have reasons for their behaviours and characteristics – we are shaped by what happens to us but also by ‘who’ happens to us. In parts of the story, with other villains, we are taught the brutal lesson of perspective.
WRITING || The pace is meandering, much like Atwood’s other novels the narrative unwinds itself in loops always gently leading to the next key piece of information. Sometimes the information must be fetched from a past event but it always ends up where it feels natural for it to be. It never felt slow which may be reflective of the audio-book format.
NARRATION || I adore the narrator (Bernadette Dunne) who also narrated part of the MaddAddam trilogy. The variant tones used for each of the characters was subtle but representative of each of them. Dunne’s reading voice is calm and reflective and I enjoyed her unhurried reading.
VERDICT || Overall, it was a very good story with excellent nuances and character depth. I didn’t enjoy it *quite* as much as I liked Atwood’s sci-fi and dystopian stuff but that could be a reflection of my own genre bias.
✩✩✩1/2
3.5 out of 5
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