Black and Blue

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Look at Male Violence Against Women
Review: Wow. Anna Quindlen did her research. The topic of male violence against women is often mistreated and misunderstood by the mainstream media. This book captures the violence (emotional, psychological, sexual, and physical) that Fran Benedetto is subjected to and finally leaves. Emotionally this is not an easy read. I found myself disturbed by the harrowing accounts of abuse. I can't imagine a better response. People should be disturbed by this social issue and more people should read this book to raise their awareness of what it's like to live with and try to escape such violence.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment.
Review: This seemed oh so shallow and without much substance. The topic and story line was timely, but not very original. Same old, same [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Worth the Journey!
Review: Extremely well written. Although the story touches upon the unfortunate existence of domestic violence and the often ineffective methods of "fighting back", Anna spares us the grizzly details and instead focus' on one women's heroic strength and drive to start anew. Her driving force...preventing the pattern from manifesting itself in the next generation, her beloved son. The ending leaves you feeling both happy and sad...never giving up hope.

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Summary: Loved the book was upset by the stolen part.
Review: Anna Quindlan has long been a favorite of mine.Beginning with her N.Y.TIMES articles which appeared weekly some years ago. I thought that the book was in keeping with her excellent literary style until I read the part about the Holocaust which was stolen directly from the true story of Gerda Weissman Klein's book "All But My Life". It seems to me that to fictionalize an event of such magnitude diminishes the value of the work of fiction and the importance of the Holocaust experience.

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Summary: I couldn't finish because it was too real...
Review: I think Anna's a gift to us, and like her previous books/columns a great deal. This book, "Black and Blue", caught my attention and I knew it wouldn't go for the cheap Hollywood storyline.

I wasn't prepared for the realism. I know what that family life is like: I've lived it. Anna caught the unspoken fear a little too well, and I gave the book away to a friend who collects first-editions.

The first quarter of the book is well-written, compelling, and accurate. It's also a good reflection of the fact that domestic abuse situations never appear as black/white to the people who're in them.

Rating:
Summary: A Taudry Tale Of Abuse and Violence
Review: Black and Blue: A Novel that Entices You with its First Line and Bores you with its Second

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Rating: 3 out of 10

"The first time my husband hit me I was nineteen years old." That is how Quindlen begins her critically acclaimed novel and her bestseller, Black and Blue. Before I bought the book, I read that first line. I was enticed. I figured that the book began with a bang. It would action-packed and emotion filled. I was ready to love the heroine and despise the villain but most of all I was ready for a book with some hard-hitting drama. I had just finished A Thousand Acres which I loved but which was unbelievably slow. After reading over 200 pages about tractors, I was ready for abundant melodrama. I thought that I had picked the right book. Boy was I wrong. The first aspect of this book was disenchanted me were the characters. I could not love the heroine and I could not hate the villain. In fact, I cannot even say that I liked Fran more than I did Bobby. Fran, the protagonist is just an unsympathetic character. She discusses her love for Bobby, the man who began hitting her when she was nineteen, more than she discusses her contempt for him. She did not make me hate Bobby. She did not make me feel sorry for her. In a book about abuse, the reader's emotions should cover all ends of the spectrum but mine stayed in neutral. I just did not feel that Fran ever triumphed. She never really recognized the absurdity of domestic violence. Within the last ten pages of the book, Fran actually accepts abuse to an extent. She is imagining her son and what he has grown up to be. She is wondering whether he has a girlfriend and whether or not he hits her like his father hit his mother. "I think of my Robert and I think of that maybe girl, and you know what? I don't give a damn about her, about her bruises and even her broken bones. I should. But I don't. I love my boy." Her undying love for her emotionally-crippled son is admirable but after what she has gone through, how can she possibly stomach her son even theoretically hitting a woman? Why should I feel sorry for a woman who does not learn from her experiences? And as for Bobby, I never really developed any intense feelings about him. Quindlen never gives enough insight into Bobby's background or his thoughts or his motives. He is a flat, static character who awakened no sensation in me. From page 2 through page 293 I could not make one iota of a connection with any of the characters all of whom were poorly developed. There was another aspect of this book that I noticed at the conclusion of my reading that struck me because I had not noticed it sooner. This book has no plot line. That is not to say that the novel had no plot it is to say that certain crucial aspects of the plot line were missing. Quindlen, rather than tell her story in the normal order (exposition, rising action, climax, denouement) decided to use flashbacks. I would have thought, before reading Black and Blue that a book about abuse should begin with the victim meeting the abuser (exposition). Then would come the first instance of abuse and the multitude of attacks that followed (rising action). The climax would come when the victim was beaten to near death and that would be followed by the victim leaving the abuser and beginning a new life (denouement). Instead, Quindlen used flashbacks to cover all of those aspects however the flashbacks were too tangential and non-sequential and they were unable to connect the dots. I think that the main reason that I never felt sorry for Fran developed from a lack of exposition in that I never really got to know her and after a certain point, I just did not care. Lastly, I did not like the first-person point of view that was used. I thought that I would in the beginning but about one-third of the way through I found that I would have preferred a third-person point of view. The first-person point of view obviously has its advantages. The reader gets more insight into the mindset of the victim but I do not think that Quindlen focused on Fran enough. Rather than zeroing in on Fran's perception of herself, she dedicates more pages to the secondary characters who serve no purpose in furthering the plot. All they do is take up pages. I could never tell exactly how Fran felt about anything. At first, I thought that she was happy to be rid of Bobby but by the end, I thought that she might almost take him back. I thought that she liked Mike but obviously she never really knew how she felt about him and by the end, I was mad at her because I thought that she had used him. I thought at points that Fran was growing and changing but at the end, I thought that she was the same person that she had been in the beginning. Quindlen did not use the first-person point of view well enough to justify its usage and thus third person would have better. A third-person point of view would have let the reader get not only Fran's perspective but Bobby's and Robert's and Mike's as well. I wanted to know what motives Bobby had for hitting his wife and how he justified such behavior to himself and I never got to know that because Fran did not know the answer. The first-person point of view left more questions unanswered than answered and I think that a third-person point of view would have had the opposite effect. For a New York Times bestseller, Black and Blue is nothing to write home about. I still do not see what all of the fuss is about. I thought that I was going to read a book whose author could be compared to Smiley rather than Danielle Steel. To me, the novel was cheap and tawdry rather than profound and emotional. The book was single-faceted. It entered only one level of emotion rather than several. I could make no connections and I had no emotion to connect to the book one way or the other. If you wish to read Black and Blue, I suggest that you read the cover and the first line and stop there. You will save yourself a lot of frustration and disappointment, and in my case, $23.00 for the hardback copy.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK, A MUST READ
Review: Black and Blue, by Anna Quindlen, is well written, has an active and enticing plot, and most of all, allows the reader into the main character's innermost thought and secrets through wonderful chacter development. Within the first 20 pages of Black and Blue the reader finds herself not only sympathizing with the protagonist, Fran Benedetto, but already hating her ill-tempered husband, Bobby as well. The text keeps the reader feeling as though they are watching a good horror movie-- always wondering when the killer will come back. Although at times I found the repeated flashbacks of stories of the dysfunction Fran and her husband went through a little redundant at the middle of the book, I was completely jolted out of my seat through the last 50 pages. Black and Blue makes me want to read more of Quindlen. Her character development and mood setting abilities are out of this world. Although at times I felt this book was little longer than necessary, I give it 4 stars.

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Summary: A story of a woman tying to leave an abusive husband w/a kid
Review: Wow, i am 14 an loved this book. Anne is a great realistic writer that tells things as they are. It was one of those books that you can't put down, but you still don't want it to end. Another thing about this book is that oh my my gosh you feel for these charecters and don't want bad things to happen to them, i cried. This is a must read!!!

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Summary: Very very boring
Review: This book makes for a boring read. It took me three long months to finish reading it. It reads like a persons diary. The main character, Fran Bendetto, gets out of bed and goes to the beauty parlor. Next day, she takes her son grocery shopping, next day they go on a picnic. When will it end? Sorry, this is a thumbs down....way down.

Rating:
Summary: Heart-rending!
Review: Quindlen does an exceptional job of describing the emotions of a mother who has fled to Florida with her son in order to escape the physical brutality of her husband, a New York policeman. This book will tear the reader apart.