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Summary: Black and Blue is a Beautiful Book
Review: No, this is not a book for the faint of heart or the person who wishes to escape the tragic and sad in all-too-many lives. It is the story of a physically abusive relationship, and a documentary about how abuse insinuates itself from fathers to sons, often unacknowledged and unstopped. It's also a story of how the victims enable the abuser, be they mothers or wifes.This is a book of many stories, however,and not all are sad. There a good men in the book, and good women, too. There are children who are loved and who are loving children. There a good teachers, caring social workers, and there is hope. It's a wonderful book--well written, suspensful, heartbreaking, and caring. It should not be missed.
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Summary: disappointing
Review: I am usually a big fan and avid reader of Oprah's Book Club list but I found this book to be less than ordinary. I found myself struggling through this book when it usually doesn't take me more than two days to read an average book. Maybe it's just me but I found this book nowhere near as good as the other books I have read from Oprah's Book Club.
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Summary: A must-read
Review: First of all, it took me all of two days to read this book, and I'm a slow reader. What I mean is that I couldn't put it down. It made my heart beat faster, filled me with doomed suspense, and I shed many tears. Not only is this a great read, but I think it's an important novel to read, especially for those who don't understand why many women stay in abusive relationships. Told in the first person's view, it really gives you a look inside the mind of an abused wife/mom, and the reader will begin to see why domestic violence so easily continues, and is exactly what it is, a trap and a vicious cycle. However, it also educates us on what a woman has to sacrifice in order to leave it behind. A sad, scary, hopeful, real and wonderful novel.
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Summary: Challenging Reality
Review: I absolutely loved One True Thing by Anna Quindlen--so I was excited to read another book by her. The story told about domestic violence is an important one to tell. There is some much complexity to the drama and pyschology of those in this type of relationship. I believe Ms. Quindlen did justice to this complexity. I didn't like the fact that resolution came through another male--a somewhat of heroic character. Is it possible for female protagonists to create successful outcomes without the need for a male "savior?" I'd like an author to tell a story with a happy ending--with the female protagonist being the "hero."
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Summary: Fiction or Real Life?
Review: I found this novel to smack heavily of realism and it kept me coming back for more. I hardly put it down while I was reading it. Anna Quindlen's novel of this abused woman and her struggles to start a new life seemed all too real to me and hit all too close to home with her vivid descriptions of the suffering Fran Benedetto endured at the hands of her policeman husband. I've seen too many of my friends go through some of these same situations not to recognize how closely art imitates life in this novel. Ms. Quindlen has brought her characters to life for me with her colorful descriptions of their struggles to over come all the adversities they've faced through their life. I never felt as though her characters couldn't have been real people that I might come in contact with everyday. I find myself wanted to read more of her work to see if I would enjoy them half as much as I enjoyed reading "Black and Blue". I would highly recommend this novel to anyone.
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Summary: A Bland Read
Review: After reading One True Thing by Anna Q., I was pleased to purchase Black and Blue. However, after reading the book, I was left with a feeling of hopelessness and slight boredom. The plot rambles on, never taking the characters or the readers anywhere of real importance. I admit my expectations were high because I like Quindlen's work, but truly, this one can stay on the shelf.
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Summary: Still crying!
Review: Black and Blue had the most profound affect on me. I'm still crying for this woman. All the abuse she took for years, her effort to escape it, and then the very bad hand she was dealt in the end. As bad at is was, it could be worse. Another book along these lines that really upset me too is HINDSIGHT by Elizabeth Rae Monroe.
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Summary: blame the victim
Review: First of all, let me freely admit that I find Anna Quindlen's brand of identity politics so repellent that there was simply no chance that I would give this book a fair reading. (For a sample of her fatuous political philosophy, check out her essay: When Reasonable-Woman Standards Are Applied, Society Will Benefit which essentially asks that we abandon objective legal standards in favor of subjective ones.) But I do also have to admit that in one very specific sense I found this book to be a page-turner: I couldn't wait to see how she would reconcile her liberal ideology with the logical requirements of the story she has to tell. However, my eager anticipation went for naught, as she instead disregards logic and simply yields the story to ideology. The novel tells the story of a woman who flees an abusive husband and, with the help of a modern day underground railroad, establishes new identities for herself and her son in Florida. The book opens after she has fled, so the only possible dramatic conclusion to the story is a final confrontation with the husband. The husband by the way is naturally a New York City cop--we all know how awful the police are--and just in case she's been too subtle in her approach to the material, Quindlen makes it clear that in addition to being abusive, he is also a racist and a homophobe, though oddly enough, the wife who grew up in the same milieu and has been married to him for umpteen years is completely devoid of any prejudice whatsoever. And how does this bright, resourceful woman prepare for the showdown that we can all tell is coming? She keeps a crowbar under the bed. That's right, a crowbar, not a gun. Ms Quindlen is so tightly bound by her own doctrinal opposition to guns that she does not allow her heroine to take the single most sensible step for self-protection available to a woman in her position. Horror movies notoriously rely on the convention of having the central characters make idiotic choices; I've not seen it but have read that in the new film Scary Movie a character is being pursued by the killer and sees a table with something like a submachine gun, a hand grenade, a chain saw and a banana, and chooses the banana to defend herself. This is funny in the context of a horror spoof, but in the context of what is seemingly supposed to be a realistic depiction of an abused woman, her metaphorical choice of the banana is not merely unbelievable, but also profoundly annoying. The wife, Fran Benedetto, has already strained the reader's patience with statements which appear to make her a nearly willing accomplice to the beatings in the first place: Whatever it was that made me soft and wet and warm whenever Bobby Benedetto whispered in my ear was part of whatever it was that made him twist my arm and slap my face. But with the tension of the plot and Fran's own intuition of danger mounting, one struggles in the face of this stupidity to control a powerful urge to yell at the book : Get serious, buy a gun! There's nothing wrong with the practice of authors allowing their political convictions to guide their fiction. Indeed, George Orwell argued, and I would agree, that all writing is political. Ms Quindlen's problem is not her political views specifically, though they are loathsome; her real problem is that she allows those politics to disfigure her story. It is simply not plausible that a responsible, terrified adult would fail to arm herself in this situation. The failure to take this necessary precaution lends an unfortunate air of "just desserts" to her final beating and the loss of her child. Authors are entitled to make certain demands of their readers, but asking them to be sympathetic to a character who behaves this stupidly is asking too much. GRADE: D+
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Summary: Wondering
Review: Anna Quidlen's novel on abuse raises disturbing questions and leaves the reader with even more disturbing answers. The main character, a long abused wife and mother, flees with her adolescent son in the hopes of putting her past behind her. I found myself wondering if that is every really possible. The conclusion of the novel left me feeling jaded. As a society, we push the main character into her decision, which we claim is the absolute correct one, and what happens? Her world destructs. Ms. Quindlen did a magnificent job keeping us in touch with the hurt and pain that comes with living with an abusive spouse, and the anguish and grief that comes with leaving one. Reading Black and Blue was truly an emotionally educating experience.
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Summary: AN EYE FOR AN EYE
Review: THIS BOOK BRINGS BACK THE OLD BIBLICAL IDEA OF AN EYE FOR AN EYE.INSTEAD OF RUNNING AWAY OUR ABUSED WIFE AND MOTHER SHOULD HAVE KILLED THE BUM-IN SELF DEFENSE.WOULD A JURY HAVE CONVICTED HER?THEN SHE WOULD NOT HAVE TO BE ALWAYS LOOKING OVER HER SHOULDER-THIS BOOK REMINDS ME OF THE MOVIE SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY(YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED TO MR WONDERFUL IN THE END? I WAS VERY SAD THAT SHE LOST HER SON IN THE END-BUT WHAT IS EVEN SCARIER IS THAT THIS HAS HAPPENED IN REAL LILE AND WILL HAPPEN AGAIN & AGAIN-MAYBE SOMEDAY THERE WILL BE A SPECIAL PRISON FOR SPOUSES WHO ABUSE(MALE OR FEMALE)I PRAY FOR ALL WHO ARE LIVING THIS BOOK IN THEIR OWN LIVES
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