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Women's Fiction

Black and Blue

Black and Blue

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: You can run. But can you hide?
Review: [Warning: a review below by "Drea248" unwittingly divulges a crucial element in the story line. Though a positive review, if you plan on reading this book, avoid the review.]

Anna Quindlan's latest work of fiction "Black and Blue" has the potential to do what few so called "women's books" are able to accomplish, have an intrinsic appeal which serves both genders. This is a story with the ability to be accessible on many levels and that is one of its strengths.

This is a book about women, about children, about men, about the building up and breaking down of relationships, about strength and weakness, about truth, about secrets, about courage, and about trust. It is enlightening, entertaining, and exciting; once started it will be difficult to put down. This is not an easy book to read or forget.

The issues raised, some resolved some not, remind us of the frailties and shortcomings we experience in our own lives. Hopefully the main topic is one with which many are personally unfamiliar. The description of the effort involved to achieve escape velocity from the gravitational pull of an old life is simultaneously interesting and frightening. But can you really escape?

This is the focal point of the story. The day-to-day events of the principal characters as they establish their new lives is beautifully and touchingly developed in every way, you almost forget how the main characters arrived where they are. Present experiences are cleverly woven with past memories throughout the narrative. However, this is a story that also has all of the underlying tension and menace of a good suspense novel, neither of which are ever very far from the surface.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A tragic account of abuse
Review: Anna Quindlen's "Black and Blue effectively portrays a woman's experience dealing with the devastating effects of an abusive marriage. What is marvelous about Ms. Quindlen's perspective in telling this story is that she allows us to go inside the mind of her main character rather than tell a chronological account of what has happened. No other novel has really explored the mind of a woman's experience with abuse as seen here in "Black and Blue." Fran Benedetto escapes her physically abusive husband with her son, Robert. Relocated from New York to Florida, Fran Benedetto now becomes Beth Crenshaw. What we deal with now is not only the fear Beth feels that her husband will find her but her fear in finding her identity as well. A different name, a different look, a different state or residence - these are all the different things Beth must come to terms with. But can we learn to accept our reality when we feel our identity is lost? Brillantly, Ms.. Quindlen shows us through the mind of Beth the process one must go through in dealing with such a tragic situation. I never wanted to refer to a book as an "Oprah book" but I feel it is necessary here. This is Oprah's April book selection and Oprah consistently chooses well-written, thought-provoking novels. However, Oprah is fixated on choosing novels dealing with abuse. Yes, I do think she has a moral obligation to teach the public about abuse and how to get out of it; however, my fear is that she is desenitizing us with this devastating issue. We are reading so much about this situation that I find myself not reacting to what abuse does. Reading "Black and Blue" I found myself not caring what happened to Beth and that was a sad state of affairs. To be fair, Ms. Quindlen wrote an excellent story which should be told - she is a good writer with the correct sense of moral obligation. I only hope Oprah realizes that there are other issues our society must deal with and pick books with different issues so that! we, the public, can look at and learn.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A Stupid Protagonist
Review: The main character made so many stupid mistakes and had such severe character flaws herself, that I had to struggle a few times to sympathize with her. She admits that when she married her husband, she realized it was 'inevitable' that he would beat her -- yet she not only went ahead and married him, but she had a child, knowing this child would be exposed to the violence. When she meets a decent guy, she admits that the guy is rather dull compared to her ex-husband -- the subtext being that she misses getting beaten up?

Most horrifying to me: She muses that if her son grows up to marry a woman and then beats that woman... she will not really care. She will not sympathize with the woman, because she will never be able to see any wrong in her son. This is one sick puppy, yo. And her sickness clearly pre-dates the abusive marriage, so it's not like her husband 'twisted' her.

I resented how she seemed hostile to the very people who were helping her out of her abusive situation. They got her a new identity, moved her to another state, supported her -- she didn't even have to work unless he wanted to -- and yet she complained about how superior they must feel for helping little pathetic her -- a paranoid feeling that was only in her own head.

Make no mistake -- I'm sympathetic to any abuse victim, but this one was such an idiot it would have been hard for ME not to knock her around a little.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Solid Contribution
Review: Fran Benedetto has a secret. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, her husband has been abusing her. Now, after nearly twenty years of marriage, Fran has decided that enough is enough. With her 10-year-old son and the help of Patty Bancroft (director of an agency to help battered women, Fran(who must change her name to Beth Crenshaw)goes to a small Florida town, hoping to escape her husband and begin a better life.

The struggle doesn't end when Fran and Robert make it safely to Florida. Fran struggles with a constant fearful knowledge that her husband will eventually get her, she feels homesick for her sister in New York, and she worries that her son is more confused and hurt than he lets on. Things become still more complicated when Fran meets Mike Riordan, Robert's fifth-grade teacher, and begins to desire a relationship with him.

Anna Quindlen's skillful writing is what saves this book from being yet another cliched "abused-wife-escapes" book. Yes, the abused wife escapes, but Quindlen describes Fran's experiences with understanding and insight. Her descriptions are some of the best I've ever read-she seems to know exactly how many words are needed to crystallize a situation, and we are taken on "journeys" through Fran's mind that never bore us and leave us with a clear understanding of the character. Cynical, nostalgic, sad, sarcastic-Quindlen deftly writes in all of those tones and creates a truly realistic novel. Characters were again, realistic and well-chosen. The only real flaw in this novel was the fact that between the second last and last chapters, there was too big of an amount of time "gone by," and as a result, the reader is left with some unanswered questions, a feeling that the author was rushing to end the book, and the thought that the book ended in a slightly "anti-climactic" way. Despite this fault, I found "Black and Blue" to be well-written, enlightening, and worth reading.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Black and Blue was close to true
Review: Wives who are battered, or girl friends may relate very well to the character Beth in this book. She was very typical of the "if I am just better, my husband won't beat me anymore" personality. This book is a sad commentary on personl relationships and how we don't take care of ourselves very well. In this book, it is heart breaking to see a cop, a person who should uphold the law, abusing it. Not that it isn't common place. It is a well-known fact that men and even women who have high stress jobs, become batterers, and abuse alcohol or controlled substances. The really sad thing is how the the kid gets stuck taking side. Often in domestic violence, there are no winners, only losers. It is the women who usely loose the most. I am angry and disgusted by domestic violence, but as a woman, I believe given the right circumstances or the worst kind of stress, I could probably dish out battery if the shoe were on the other foot. Anna Quindlen is an easy author to read. She writes excellent dispriptions of places. This subject matter or this book should be rated R for violence. This novel also would most certainly trigger uncomfortable feelings in one who has been in an abusive relationship, or who has been abused.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Not the usual suspects . . .
Review: My first thought on reading the description of this book was, "Oh, no. Here we go again. Another 'Look at me, I hurt'" type of book. "Abused woman barely escapes." That type of thing. Boy was I wrong! Anna Quindlen has given us a rare look into the life of a victim with "Black and Blue." What might have turned into a made-for-TV-movie type of book in any other author's hands turns to gold in this riveting tale or abuse, dysfunction, and psychological horror. I also initially thought that making the main character's husband a cop was, well, a bit of a cop-out (sorry). But Quindlen manages to bring even this to a new level. This is just a great book and I highly recommend it. Would also recommend another wonderful (though disturbing) book that I recently came across. "The Bark of the Dogwood" by Jackson McCrae. Equally well written and on the same level as this one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Extremely Powerful and Nervewracking!
Review: I could NOT put this one down for the life of me! I literally read it in 6 hours! It was explosive at times and tense most of the time. Always powerful and enlightening.
The writer did a fantastic job of sharing the character's emotions and fears with the reader. I was constantly on edge and nervous for her.

Fran is an abused woman with a little boy in tow and on the run from the very man that may kill her. Married 18 years and most of them not happy memories, this nurse is finally strong enough to leave the situation, but fears she will be caught.
The reader feels her pain and frustration the whole way through. Numerous flashbacks and told from first person, this is so unbelievably powerful and eyeopening, that I recommended it to everyone I knew.
Fran doesn't come off as being whiny or 'feel bad for me', she comes off as being so incredibly strong, yet very vulnerable and real. Someone you would know. She doesn't try to turn her young son against his abusive father, yet she doesn't try to pull the wool over his eyes either, which I thought was refreshing. Robert, her son, isn't out of control or misbehaved so there isn't the 'irritating child' factor you see so much in novels.
Fran must go under an assumed name and identity and start her life over at 38. Being married to her husband for 18 years and knowing nothing else but him and his demands, she finds it hard at times to adjust and move on, but soon she realizes that life is full of unseen opportunities and possibly a new lovelife.
But will her new life come crumbling down after one tiny misstep? You see, Fran's husband is none other than one of New York's finest...and a very determined detective...

Do NOT miss this gem...

Tracy Talley~@

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Did she do the right thing?
Review: Did Fran do the right thing by fleeing with her son Robert from Bobby, her abusive husband? I would have to say probably not . . . but I could be wrong. I suppose when someone is in that horrible of a situation it is very easy to judge them as an outsider; perhaps if I had been in her shoes, I would have done the same thing. It really was inevitable, though, that "Beth" would eventually be found. I think there's an old saying something like "two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead," well it was only a matter of time before Robert took a wrong step and blew their cover. And maybe Fran would have eventually, too- after all, she never really was 100% committed to the decision she had made. Now Robert is in a worse situation than he was before: alone with a mentally ill father, living on the run, cut off from his mother . . . the boy has a long road ahead. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. I thought the ending to Beth's story was very appropriate: although she was able to start a new life, it was a far cry from a happy ending. She definitely has issues that will continue to impact her life forever. For example, she admits to not having a "jones" for her new husband, a far cry from the excitement she felt for the "tasty and dangerous" Bobby. In spite of everything she doesn't seem to have been able to get past her weakness for the bad boys. Still, her life will be good enough . . . Robert is the real casualty.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hits a nerve
Review: This book hits a nerve, like Quindlen's "One True Thing" or McCrae's "Bark of the Dogwood." Fran, the main character in "Black and Blue" finally does manage to escape the abuse and dysfunction of her relationship with Bobby (she takes a different name and relocates) but the fear still lingers. Anyone who has ever been in one of these types of relationships will find this a disturbing read. But the most harrowing aspect of this novel is that it shows us the psychological fear that a victim goes through, even after escaping the physical abuse. It's that "it can happen again" syndrome that paralyzes so many victims--the fear that you haven't really escaped or that you might put yourself accidentally in another situation like the one you just fought so hard to free yourself from. Well-paced and brilliantly written, "Black and Blue" is riveting.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Pot-boiler, but all right
Review: My aunt gave me this book for Christmas (this is what happens when people know you like to read but don't have any idea about your taste, I suppose), and while I am certainly not in the target demographic--I'm 21 years old and male--I was surprised that I didn't hate it.

The thing that most impressed me was how nervous and scared I got that Fran's husband would find her. "Black and Blue" is a very tense book, and since you're absolutely *sure* he will eventually track her down, you're a bundle of nerves any time she goes out into public.

It loses steam pretty seriously toward the end, although the ending itself is less than conventional and redemptive without being treacly.

It's an all-right read, but if you're spending more than a week on it, you're doing something wrong.


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