Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride
The Robber Bride is the story of three women who have known each other since college, and have been brought together by their common experience of friendship with Zenia, a clever and amoral femme fatale, a villain who slyly befriended them and set on taking their husbands or boyfriends away from them.
As the story begins, Tony, Charis and Roz have buried Zenia’s ashes together, relieved to learn that the woman who ruined their lives is dead. But one day, as they have lunch at The Toxique, a fashionable Toronto restaurant, Zenia comes in, ignores them, and sits at a table, very much alive…
From this point, the story is divided in three parts, as each woman recalls her damaging experience with venomous Zenia, the events that led to it, their childhoods and the men in their lives. The first narrator, Tony, is a history teacher at Toronto university, whose passion for battles and wars contrasts with her small and inconspicuous features. Ambidextrous and brilliant, Tony as a child is apart from the others, until she meets West, a male student she befriends and who lives with Zenia…
Charis is a spiritual woman, who believes in crystals, tarot readings, and ghosts. She lives on an island off the Toronto coast. From the beginning, she knows that Zenia is not dead, she doesn’t believe in death anyway. She is haunted by the disappearance of Billy, her American boyfriend who left with Zenia and was never seen again. She fears and wishes she could ask Zenia about what happened….
Roz is a successful and colorful businesswoman who seems the strongest of the three. However, maybe because she felt herself so strong, she became Zenia’s victim after having been warned against her by the two others, because she has one weakness: her father and the complex time in history that made him a hero… or a crook. Because she thinks Zenia might have knowledge about this shadowy period of his life, she also falls into her traps…
Now Zenia is back and the three woman have to figure out what she wants before it is too late and she wrecks their lives once again. Stronger from their past experience, will they resist Zenia’s lure?
The Robber Bride is a fascinating story involving three original point of views. We meet three women with distinctive and multi-layered personalities, and a fourth who is progressively drawn through the others’ sometimes contradictory perceptions. The Robber Bride is my favorite Margaret Atwood’s novel so far. I was drawn in this story from the first page, and I think what made it superior to The Blind Assassin in my opinion, is that Atwood knew how to leave shadows and interrogation marks (so that Zenia ultimately remains a riddle). I also loved how Atwood used dreams, fairy tales and symbolism to define mysterious Zenia.
The Robber Bride is a masterpiece…
Rating: 5/5
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