Black and Blue

Rating:
Summary: Black and Blue - an Overview
Review: I found this book to be a more than interesting insight to the plight of abused women. The appreciation I feel, being in a healthy loving retlationship, still makes my stomach clench with the not-too-descriptive details of abuse within the book. I saw, more than the focus on abuse, the ability for someone to overcome the physical and emotional odds, and continue on in life. Continue on with hope, love and even fear. I also admired the author's insight at what individuals make of their own lives - including re-creating much needed relationships and bonds, with entirely different people.

Rating:
Summary: Wanted to hate it, ended up loving it
Review: I really really did not want to read this book. A book about spousal abuse and pain and agony--who needs it? But I'd read Anna Quindlen's first book, One True Thing, and remembered how much it had touched me. Quindlen is a gifted writer. Black and Blue gripped me, held me--for weeks after I'd finished it, even. It was not what I'd feared--an archly feminist tract railing against abusive men in society. It was a sensitive, warm, sometimes harsh, sometimes funny piece of writing that all women--and men--should read.

Rating:
Summary: Blecchhh!
Review: This book was interesting and realistic, but there was too much oooey gooey stuff about the little boy. Fran was always like, "I love my son sooo much...oh I must protect him...oh I'm such a great mother cause I love my son..." Gimme a break! Every other page was about how much this lady loved her son.

Rating:
Summary: Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen
Review: This was a great book that I had a hard time putting down....it was also VERY depressing because it brings you to a reality that these violent domestic circumstances really exist and how it affects the innocent children. I strongly urge you to read it!

Rating:
Summary: Moving
Review: Realistic fears of every women who has ever been abused by their spouse. Very insightful and touching.

Rating:
Summary: Quidlen's book, One True Thing
Review: This book was very intresting, yet not as good as her book other book, One True Thing. I like Black and Blue and disliked it at the same time. It was as if the book was sucking you in but it really wasn't that intresting. Fran Benedetto, escaped her abusive marriage and started over as Beth Crenshaw, with her son Robert. It was kind of diffcult to follow with all of her flashbacks and what was happening with her life at the present time. What I did enjoy about the book was that Anna Quindlen was painted a very vivid picture of her charaters, I felt as although they are real people.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book Overall
Review: The author definately kept me interested throughout the entire book. The ending was not what I expected as I felt that Beth/Fran didn't REALLY LOVE Mike. It seems she just gave in and settled since he was a nice guy. The only thing that bothered me throughout the book is that I kept wondering what Bobby was doing while she was living a new life in Florida and you really don't find that out until the very end.

Rating:
Summary: Her Best Work!
Review: With the greatest care, attention to detail and emotional insight, Anna Quindlen creates characters who are so incredibly real, the reader develops an ever-increasing understanding and empathy for them with the turning of each page. Her multi-dimensional character portraits allow the reader to become completely absorbed in a life that, for many of us, is completely foreign. The reader need not know intimately the terror of domestic violence, the insecurity of starting a new life, or even the intensity of the mother-child relationship; first-hand experience is not a prerequisite. Through the frightening accounts of Fran Benedetto, the courageous choices of Beth Crenshaw and the sublime story-telling of Anna Quindlen, the audience is captured and forced to watch every beating, every embrace, every second - a helpless voyeur.

Rating:
Summary: it's a great book
Review: We had to do a novel study for my english class. So I decide to do this book not know what it as about.To my surpise it was a good chose. I live that life and know how fran feels. Anna keep the work up.

Rating:
Summary: Eye opener to violence with not-so-great ending
Review: This book was a great eye-opener to the world of domestic violence and abusive relationships by portraying the life of a woman and son in hiding from a wife beating husband. The gradual adjustment to a secretive life and the horrors of such an experience for both mother and child gave the reader a compassionate view of the struggle suffered by battered women. I do, however, have to say that the ending was disappointing and I would have chosen a much different way to end the book.