The Robber Bride

The Robber Bride is a different sort of novel than what I was expecting from Margaret Atwood, but it was still a hard book to put down! The title references 
the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale: The Robber Bridegroom which I had never heard of before, but you can read here. 


Atwood is writing to her age group in this tale, which is an older deomgraphic than I usually read, but it was still intrinsically an Atwood novel.  The narrative rotates between three old friends, Tony, Charis, and Roz, as well as the past and the present.  The three women are tied together by one more woman, Zenia, and the university the four attended.  Zenia, the dead and the vil, ties these women together as she destroys their lives, betrays them completely, but she never gets a chance to tell her story (though I would have loved a Zenia point-of-view!). 


The women think they have moved past Zenia and the pain she has caused, until they see her while they're out to lunch, or at least, they think they do. Is Zenia still alive? And how can she hurt them now? 


As I already said, I could hardly put this down.  This was a great novel. I loved it. Read it & read on!