The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood

Genre: Fiction

Rating:   ★  ★ ★  ★  ★      

Published: 1995

Publisher: Bantam Books

Pages: 528

YO, so I'm actually really exciting to be writing a review for this book since I was SO PUMPED to read it (and had been looking for it for a few months) and no one else I know has read it. I read The Handmaid's Tale* by Margaret Atwood my freshman year (of college), and immediately went on the hunt for this puppy afterwards. Atwood has a reputation as a feminist author, and I would say that I agree with that title. Whereas The Handmaid's Tale is a more dystopic novel (taking place in the fundamentalist Christian state of Gilead), The Robber Bride is a more intimate and modern story that takes place in Canada in the very early 1990s (I'm dating it around 1990, maaaaaybe 1991). 

The Robber Bride focuses on a small group of friends — Tony, Charis and Roz — whose lives have become intwined since college thanks to the bewitching and devastating Zenia. Zenia stole their men, undermined their careers, and effectively threatened their Way Of Life before disappearing into thin air. The last the trio had heard of her was her death, and after attending her funeral, considered to be a ghastly warning from the past. Tony, Charis and Roz have since begun a slow healing process, trying to move on from the damage that Zenia has caused. But one day, while the three women are out for lunch, who should walk into the restaurant but Zenia — very much alive. What does she want? Why has she come back? And what does she have in store for Tony, Charis and Roz?

The Robber Bride is over five hundred pages long, and I flew threw it. The book is divided into different section, with Tony, Charis and Roz serving as "perspective" narrators for each section. While The Robber Bride detailed Zenia's relationship with the three women, it also detailed the life experiences of Tony, Charis, and Roz, and touched on issues such as mental illness, sexual abuse, divorce, death, and money and class. Personally, I think that Atwood did a fantastic job at juggling the three women's perspectives. While each character's perspective chapter was openly characterized by one of the three women, Atwood maintained her style overall. (I feel like that was a bad explanation, so let me try again: Atwood asserts the characteristic differences of the three women throughout their respective chapters while maintaining a specific writing style throughout. Some very, very tricky writing, I think.)

The Robber Bride continuously reflections on issues relating to gender and power relations in the modern (or post-modern?) era. While Tony, Charis and Roz each lead lives that (I feel) they want to lead (Tony as an academic, Charis as a free spirit, Roz as a businesswoman), they are each constrained by gender roles and expectations. Tony is frustrated that, as a woman, her work relating to military history is taken less seriously. Charis is often at odds with her daughter, a strict by-the-book individual. Roz constantly juggles the difficulties of being a mother, being an executive, and being a "good feminist." 

Zenia, however, does not seem to reflect on such identity politics or issues. Zenia is portrayed by Atwood as a third sex; someone who is able to easily navigate male and female world and roles. Unlike the three women, Zenia isn't boxed in by social expectations, and doesn't seem to be at odds with her gender. Zenia is also, however, not at the beck and call of her sexual appetite as often as the men in The Robber Bride are. It is because of her "third role" that she is presented as a terrifying question and an unpredictable actor to Tony, Charis, and Roz. The Robber Bride doesn't deal very much with topics like gender fluidity and queer identification (and it also only touches upon homosexuality), but does discuss and elaborate upon the choices that women are often forced to make regarding their families, careers, and love lives. 

I'd absolutely recommend The Robber Bride; I thought that it was a super engaging and engrossing read, and that the book's heft ceased to be intimidating once I got into the swing of things. Tony, Charis and Roz are women whose strengths and weaknesses (and vanities) differ greatly from one woman to the next. I enjoyed reading about their relationships with each other as much as I enjoyed speculating on what Zenia was planning.

*The Handmaid's Tale was spooky and thought-provoking and presented a situation I thought to be absolutely terrifying: zero bodily autonomy. (Unfortunately I don't have a review for it; just take my word for it, it's fantastic.)

The Chaperone, by Laura Moriarty

Genre: (Historical) Fiction

Rating:  ★ ★ ★      

Published: 2012

Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover

Pages: 384

The Chaperone grabbed my attention for a pretty shallow reason, and it is that it is set (at least somewhat) in Wichita, Kansas. Now, I'm not from Wichita, but I do enjoy Kansas lit every now and then that a) is not The Wizard of Oz, or b) is not In Cold Blood. You would think that those are pretty easy qualifiers, but alas — the supply of Kansas books is dreadfully thin. What do I have to do to read about my home state?

The Chaperone details the story of one Cora Carlisle, a well-to-do lady in 1920s Wichita who volunteers as a chaperone for the young, wanna be dancer/actress, Louise Brooks. Louise has been awarded a space in the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing for a month-long training camp, and — being a young woman — obviously needs someone to look out for her "wellbeing" (read: to make sure she doesn't drink and have sex). Cora is motivated to accompany Louise not out of a sense of moral righteousness (although she does give some morally upright speeches to Louise, who promptly brushes them off), but for her own personal reasons. 

Fun fact: Louise Brooks is actually a real person — something I didn't know before reading this book. After her time with the Denishawn School of Dancing, Louise became a silent movie film star, although her career did fade over time. But despite Louise's celebrity, I wouldn't say that she overpowered Cora's personal narrative.

The real Louise Brooks. Via. 

The Kansas Theater in Wichita, KS. Circa 1922. Via.

Identity is a central theme to The Chaperone; who do you think you are, who do others think you are, what do you think others think of you... Moriarty shows in The Chaperone how exhausting the constant scrutiny of being a young (and older) woman is. Throughout the book, both Cora and Louise undergo some sort of identity crisis, although at different points. Cora's search for identity spans more or less the entire book, whereas Louise's crisis is more acute in the last third of the book. Although both characters pursue their interests and desires differently, although it is clear that Cora is obviously shaped (some would say "liberated) by her short time with Louise. 

The Chaperone spans decades and covers a huge variety of historical events — orphan trains, the women's suffrage movement, Prohibition, The Depression, World War II... It's a huge undertaking, and obviously required a huge amount of research on the part of Moriarty. 

The Chaperone is a pretty fast and easy read. That aside, it does delve into darker subjects, and Moriarty isn't one to shy away from character confrontation. So while I wouldn't say that The Chaperone was particularly challenging, and it didn't upset or enthrall me like The Mayor of Castro Street (for example), it did spark my interest in several historical events (like orphan trains and the women's suffrage movement), and certainly gave me some "food for thought" regarding America in the early twentieth century and the fairly dramatic social changes going on then. 

For all of those of you who're interested in reading The Chaperone, I'd recommend pairing it with a nice ragtime playlist and your best suffragette hat. (And maybe some white wine, if you're feeling particularly rebellious.)

Kindle Reads: Doomed Queens, by Kris Waldherr

Via.

Genre: Biography, Non-Fiction

Rating:  ★ ★ ★ 

Published: 2008

Publisher: Three Rivers Press

Pages: 176

Fun facts about me: I considered being a history major in college before deciding that I actually hated all of the history classes I had taken and was waaaay more interested in examining political mechanisms of historical events. (I'm looking at you, twentieth century anarchists.) But despite that, I love reading history books and learning more about dead people and past events (a quick way to my heart: buy The Rise of the Third Reich for me, plz), so when I saw Doomed Queens mentioned on a blog I really like, I decided to get it for my Kindle before I left for my semester abroad.

In Doomed Queens, Kris Waldherr basically sits you down in a coffee shop (or bar), and over drinks talks to you about powerful women throughout history who met their ends in...less than pleasant ways. Doomed Queens is basically the equivalent of having a late night talk with one of your best friends about "that girl" who was a little too fab or too crazy for this world, and what happened to her ("Like, can you believe she was caught trying to overthrow her husband?"). Also: there are chapter quizzes that ask us, "What have we learned?"

Waldherr tackles more than 400 years of queens (and regicide) in this book, from Athaliah (from Biblical times) to Princess Di. Because of the huge scope of this book, and its relatively short length, it's basically impossible to get a totally comprehensive history of all of the people mentioned in it. While I did appreciate how there were a lot of queens presented and written about in Doomed Queens, I sometimes felt a little frustrated when I felt like their section was super short, or that their section could have gone more in-depth. But, I mean, some queens just weren't going to have a lot of background sources available (I'm looking at you Athaliah). Waldherr crafts a narrative and history within Doomed Queens that tries to make the most out of the (sometimes minimal) resources available to her.

I also had a few annoyances with the Kindle version of this ebook. Mostly, that I felt like the various graphics that were included in the text were either blurred or not formatted well. I pulled up the Kindle app on my computer to try to get a better glimpse of one of the illustrations in the book, but it wasn't much of an improvement. These technological glimpses sometimes annoyed me, but luckily the narrative wasn't really affected by it.

 

Some nifty illustrations (drawn by Waldherr). Via. Via.

While I'm not sure if I would reread Doomed Queens, I did appreciate how Waldherr introduced me to a lot of new historical figures that I can potentially research in the future. I would recommend this book to anyone jonesing for a quick, informative read or anyone who is interested in learning more about past female leaders or past royal families.