The Robber Bride

Rating:
Summary: What a Shame!
Review: Oh no! This is simply an embarrassment! This book is nothing more than a silly romance novel masquerading as literature. Atwood is my favorite author but this book just supports my theory that she has "sold-out" to Hollywood (what a shameful movie The Handmaid's Tale was!) Don't bother with this mess. Read The Handmaid's Tale or Life Before Man or any other "early" Atwood. If you are an Atwood fan, don't embarrass her by reading this. Let's hope things turn around SOON.

Rating:
Summary: Not one of her best
Review: Zenia is not a character, she is a mannequin, a hollow shell. There is no attempt to explain or her to probe her motivations. This is not necessarily a weakness - many novels use a Zenia like device to bounce the real characters off. Unfortunately the other three women are not Atwood's best creations. Anybody familiar with the author's work will recognise the only child, growing up in the grey 40s and 50s under the thumb of a strict mother who finds it hard to show her love for her daughter, as a staple of most of her novels. The parents' marriage is typically bad, unloving, sometimes wrecked by adultery, often ending in violence. In The Robber Bride we get not one but three war babies/only children with similar histories and parents. Superficially the three are very different from eachother, but too often they seem like three sides of the same character rather than three different women. Charis is a grotesque caricature of an ageing hippie - the author barely misses a trick or another opportunity for gentle mockery. One can often predict what dippy phrase Charis is going to say/think next. The adult versions of Roz and Tony are more interesting, but the book is padded out to absurd lengths, enticing the reader to believe that something might be explained, that some part of Zenia might be revealed. I write this as somebody who has read all nine Atwood novels in the last 7 months and enjoyed most of them. Sadly the one I saved until last turned out to be one of the worst three. There are a number of very strong passages in the chapters dealing with childhood reminiscences - Karen's relationship with her grandmother and Roz's observations of her parents are wonderfully written and likely to remain in the memory long after most of the rest of this disappointing novel by a great writer.

Rating:
Summary: One of my top ten favorite books
Review: I love this book. There are books I read over and over, and this is one of them. Every female character is interesting, multifaceted, and well-drawn. The whole thing has a resounding honesty. It's by far Atwood's best and most exciting book, in my opinion.

Rating:
Summary: I felt it was enticing and difficult to put down.
Review: I haven't read a lot of Margaret Atwood, just The classic Handmaid's Tale, and the beautifully crafted Alias Grace, a book a would recommend to all. However, from what I see, this Canadian author has the fabulous ability of mixing her style up in every written piece. Without the author's name, there would be little thought that such different novels can be claimed by the same author. I throughly enjoyed this book, although I was frustrated by the weakness of all three characters, and the ending left a little to be desired. I do feel that the pathetic nature of the very three different women is meant to illustrate that 'love' can affect us all, despite our creed, social seating and persona. I longed for the ending to be of more substance, but on the whole, loved the fact that the characters were so throughly developed, and enjoyed the balancing and symmetry of the novel.

Rating:
Summary: . i fell in love with this book .
Review: I had previously read both The Handmaid's Tale and Surfacing when I read The Robber Bride, but this was the book that got beneath my skin and got me connected on a much deeper level.

Rating:
Summary: My favourite Atwood novel
Review: A book definitely to reread; at first, it's all to easy to hate Zenia. However, Atwood is also subtle enough to make us realise that the three friends are not entirely blameless. For me, the Roz part of the story was the most interesting and I can't recall rereading any other modern novel so often. It's much more real than the distant and cold Handmaid's Tale and less indulgent than Cat's Eye. The symmetrical structure also works without provoking feelings of artifice.

Rating:
Summary: Way Deep Novel Explores Female Fueding & Obsession
Review: Three very different women, a sensitive mystic, a savvy businesswoman and a quiet scholar, share one thing in common: they all lost boyfriends in college to an exotic femme fatale named Zenia. This tale of female rivalry is exceptional in that it shows that Zenia's power was really only proportionate to their obsession with her. Beautifully written and plotted, this is a novel of rediscovering the past to find it wasn't exactly as simple as one thought, and, in the process, discovering the future.

Rating:
Summary: Enthralling...until the end
Review: This book started off with a lot of questions which provided a great need to keep reading. However, once the end was achieved, there were still a lot of questions. Why did Zenia change her room for every visitor? What was the point of Larry's involvement? Did Zenia jump to her death? Zenia's real death at the end was perhaps the most disappointing element of this novel. Although, one redeeming quality was to see how much control she still had on all of the people in her past life... Great read for the summer...Just don't be looking for a book to deeply contemplate...This one will drive you nuts trying to figure out what all of Zenia's motives are...

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as Margaret Atwood's other books.
Review: It took me about a month to read this book. I read two other books during the same time. The plot was very dissapointing. I found it very difficult to care about any of the characters. I have read many of Margaret Atwood's books, and this is the first that was a complete let down.

Rating:
Summary: The best book I've ever read.
Review: I keep coming back to this book. It has everything. The plot is intricate and complete, satisfying in its fine details and in its overall structure. The language is beautiful, brilliant, stunning, sometimes hilarious and sometimes harrowing. But the characters are what elevate this book into the realm of great literature. These people are so real that I often find myself wondering how Roz is doing, what Tony's up to. Nabokov may have the edge in language (in his fourth [fifth?] language, no less!), but his most finely drawn characters are pale shadows next to these. (And he's really not very good with women.) I cannot urge you strongly enough to read this book.