I just finished reading The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood. I haven't read any of her stuff before but I had heard of the Handmaid's Tale. My daughter read that one while still in school (English lit. degree) but she didn't like it much. She gave me the Robber Bride but hasn't read it herself.
Apparently Atwood is considered some intellectual, feminist icon in the English lit community.
My take?
Peh.
The difference between "Feminist Literature" and chick lit is that Femlit has no sense of humor. And the women in femlit are really, really stupid.
The Robber Bride was an okay story along the lines of a Judith Krantz. It was really no more than a Danielle Steele novel without the romance. What's left, you may ask?
Suffering.
If I had to come up with one word to describe this book, it would be "irritating."
Atwood writes it in the present tense, as in "Tony walks to the book case and removes a volume." I find that irritating. Shtick like that bugs the crap out of me. It takes me out of the story and shows the heavy hand of the writer on every page. Like that book I read a few years ago that was praised for using no punctuation; why not just print the whole darn thing on photos of the author's face? The result is a book that may as well come with a sound track of the author yelling "Hey, it's me! I wrote this! Remember me?? HELLOOOOO!"
Alfred Hitchcock liked to appear in brief cameos in all of his movies. Imagine if, instead of just being the guy who missed the bus, he always looked right into the camera and winked.
That's what this writing is like.
Also irritating is the fact that the three protagonist's in the story behaved so idiotically that by the end I was thinking "Good! You got what you deserved!"
I've read books where the author succeeds in presenting the character's motivations to the point where even their bad choices make sense at the time. In The Robber Bride, the antagonist practically hypnotizes every other character to do her evil bidding.
It actually reminded me of an urban legend I heard when I was in fifth grade.
One of my friends told us all a horrible story of a guy who stopped off at a bar one night after work and drank until two a.m. and then drove home. When he got up in the morning, his wife accused him of driving drunk and he denied it, until they went out to the garage and
there was an eight year old girl embedded in the grill of his car!!!
All my friends gasped at the horror and folly of drunk driving.
I said "What the heck was an eight year old girl doing out at two in the morning?"
It's no wonder they stopped inviting me to their slumber parties.
Oh, and instead of actually coming up with an ending, Atwood just conveniently stops the action. Imagine how you'd feel if the big finale of Return of the Jedi, instead of having Luke and Darth go hand to hand, Vader just suffered a massive stroke.
Bleah.
