2011 Reading list #1: The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
This is a re-read. It was on the shelf at home and I wanted to read something I knew I would like but that I hadn't read recently. I think I read TRB about 13 years ago and quite enjoyed it then. It was somewhat different from what I remembered, but still enjoyable. I mean... it's Margaret Atwood. The woman can WRITE. It's work like hers that reminds me why I can't stand your average work of trade fiction even when it's high up on the bestseller list. I crave excellent prose. Like I've said many times about many authors, there's an art to making your writing look effortless; I appreciate that craft even though I'd be totally incapable of it myself.
TRB is about three women whose lives have been destroyed in succession by a woman they all met around their college years. There has been little connection between them except as they've come into contact through their mutual disasters. The woman Zenia starts out as just the friend they think they each need, but she exploits their weaknesses to get money and opportunity and steal their boyfriends/husbands.
She's the kind of person you'd like to reach out and strangle, but can't. In each of the three narratives of betrayal is the shame of having been duped, which makes for a skin-crawling read at times. I'm left feeling at the end that each of these women gains a great deal more than she has lost, while Zenia is the ultimate loser, but still wouldn't wish their experiences on my worst enemy.
I'm particularly fond of Tony, the historian who recreates famous battles on a sand table in her basement with cloves, split peas, and other assorted legumes and tiny food items standing in for soldiers. Each of the three women views her own past (and life in general) through a particular lens -- for Tony, it's history; for Charis, spirituality; for Roz, it's business. Each lens brings the theme of alliance and betrayal into a slightly different focus. The bulk of the novel is spent in long retrospectives over each woman's life and how she got to be focused on this particular lens, in fact. I should say here that anyone with a history involving sexual abuse or trauma will find MAJOR triggers in Charis' story--fair warning.
As is always the case with Atwood, the prose is funny and breathtakingly clever at times. I remember not much caring for the ending of this book the first time through; I was less put off the second time. It is rather abrupt, and led to my having a theory for many years that Atwood just can't handle endings very well, but I haven't read enough of her work to really say that for sure.
"All history is written backwards, writes Tony, writing backwards. We choose a significant event and examine its causes and its consequences, but who decides whether the event is significant? We do, and we are here; and it and its participants are there. They are long gone; at the same time, they are in our hands. Like Roman gladiators, they are under our thumbs. We make them fight their battles over again for our edification and pleasure, who fought them once for entirely other reasons.
"Yet history is not a true palindrome, thinks Tony. We can't really run it backwards and end up at a clean start. Too many of the pieces have gone missing; also we know too much, we know the outcome. Historians are the quintessential voyeurs, noses pressed to Time's glass window. They can never actually be there on the battlefield, they can never join in those moments of supreme exaltation, or of supreme grief either. Their re-creations are at the best just patchy waxworks. Who'd choose to be God? To know the whole story, its violent clashes, its melees, its deadly conclusions, before it even begins? Too sad. And too demoralizing. For a soldier on the even of battle, ignorance is the same as hope. Thought neither one is bliss." (p. 123)
TRB is about three women whose lives have been destroyed in succession by a woman they all met around their college years. There has been little connection between them except as they've come into contact through their mutual disasters. The woman Zenia starts out as just the friend they think they each need, but she exploits their weaknesses to get money and opportunity and steal their boyfriends/husbands.
She's the kind of person you'd like to reach out and strangle, but can't. In each of the three narratives of betrayal is the shame of having been duped, which makes for a skin-crawling read at times. I'm left feeling at the end that each of these women gains a great deal more than she has lost, while Zenia is the ultimate loser, but still wouldn't wish their experiences on my worst enemy.
I'm particularly fond of Tony, the historian who recreates famous battles on a sand table in her basement with cloves, split peas, and other assorted legumes and tiny food items standing in for soldiers. Each of the three women views her own past (and life in general) through a particular lens -- for Tony, it's history; for Charis, spirituality; for Roz, it's business. Each lens brings the theme of alliance and betrayal into a slightly different focus. The bulk of the novel is spent in long retrospectives over each woman's life and how she got to be focused on this particular lens, in fact. I should say here that anyone with a history involving sexual abuse or trauma will find MAJOR triggers in Charis' story--fair warning.
As is always the case with Atwood, the prose is funny and breathtakingly clever at times. I remember not much caring for the ending of this book the first time through; I was less put off the second time. It is rather abrupt, and led to my having a theory for many years that Atwood just can't handle endings very well, but I haven't read enough of her work to really say that for sure.
"All history is written backwards, writes Tony, writing backwards. We choose a significant event and examine its causes and its consequences, but who decides whether the event is significant? We do, and we are here; and it and its participants are there. They are long gone; at the same time, they are in our hands. Like Roman gladiators, they are under our thumbs. We make them fight their battles over again for our edification and pleasure, who fought them once for entirely other reasons.
"Yet history is not a true palindrome, thinks Tony. We can't really run it backwards and end up at a clean start. Too many of the pieces have gone missing; also we know too much, we know the outcome. Historians are the quintessential voyeurs, noses pressed to Time's glass window. They can never actually be there on the battlefield, they can never join in those moments of supreme exaltation, or of supreme grief either. Their re-creations are at the best just patchy waxworks. Who'd choose to be God? To know the whole story, its violent clashes, its melees, its deadly conclusions, before it even begins? Too sad. And too demoralizing. For a soldier on the even of battle, ignorance is the same as hope. Thought neither one is bliss." (p. 123)