Discouraging. That's what I'd answer if anyone asked me for my impression of Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride. Gothic.* Over-the-top, dark, filled with mysterious happenings and quasi-supernatural doings (Charis and her healing grandmother, for example), and not a little satirical.


I found myself becoming bogged down about halfway through. Not because Atwood is boring, but because the style and subject are discouraging. How can good writing ever be discouraging, you ask? Good question. Answer? I've no idea. But I found it discouraging nonetheless. Perhaps it's just the looking at the dark side of humanity that does it (with or without a dollop of humour/satire or no satire). More likely it's the characters, these three women who are strangely embarrassing as women. Although I'm not really sure I know what I mean by that . . . that's just the impression I had while reading (I guess you could say I didn't really warm to any of the three main characters).

Don't get me wrong. This is an engrossing, involving, obsessing read. Three women (Tony, Roz, and Charis) are united by their past with another woman (Zenia) who has, supposedly, shuffled off this mortal coil. When Zenia shows up at their lunchtime spot alive, the narrative follows each of the three women in turn as she reflects about her own past and how that past intersects with Zenia . . . and we discover what each decides to do with her now. We get inside the heads of all three -- Tony, Charis, Roz -- but Zenia's thoughts remain, like most things about her, outside our ken. Duplicitous, possibly evil, man-stealing, elusive Zenia. It's all kind of like Sex and the City on steriods.

All three women have roots in WWII, all three women have issues with their parents, and all three women have man troubles. Serious man troubles. As in, their men are troubled and trouble them. Mostly, seemingly, due to Zenia. As Tony muses, it's like Zenia holds them in thrall. Interesting, since the men, ultimately, hardly matter at all.

This novel is kind of like a fairy tale for feminists (not the Disney kind of fairy tale, by any means, but the authentic fairy tales that are filled with horror and pain and misery, etc, like those of the Brothers Grimm) with Zenia as the evil witch making foul-smelling soup out of other women's lives. But the narrative also toys with female archetypes -- the crone, the mother, the handmaiden, the man-eater, etc. -- highlighting, in the process, female expectations of other women as well as the expectations women place on themselves.

Ultimately, I appreciated it, I respected the story-telling craft involved, and I enjoy books that play around with gender norms and expectations . . . but I can't say I loved it.

*I suppose the technical term is Southern Ontario Gothic.