The Robber Bride

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**The Robber Bride**

A British paperback edition of The Robber Bride.
Author	Margaret Atwood
Cover Artist	Malcolm Tarlofsky (first edition, hardcover)
Country	Canada
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	McClelland and Stewart
Released	September 1993
Media Type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	546 pp (first edition, hardcover), 528 pp (Paperback Ed.)
ISBN	ISBN 0-7710-0821-X (first edition, hardcover), ISBN 0-385-49103-4
Preceded by	Good Bones
Followed by	Alias Grace

The Robber Bride is a Margaret Atwood novel first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1993. Set in present-day Toronto, Ontario, the novel begins with three women (Roz, Charis, and Tony) who meet once a month in a restaurant to share a meal.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

During their most recent outing, they see Zenia, a woman they'd all grown up with who stole their respective beaux. The novel alternates between the present and flashbacks by Roz, Charis, and Tony respectively, each one with a different background for Zenia, the title character.

The betrayals of Zenia are what brought the three together as friends. The novel, like other works of Atwood, deals with power struggles between men and women; it is also a meditation on the nature of friendship, power and trust between women. Zenia's character can be read as either the ultimate self-empowered woman, a traitor who abuses sisterhood, or simply a self-interested mercenary who cunningly uses the 'war between the sexes' to further her own interests.

When in the present Roz, Charis, and Tony finally confront Zenia in a Toronto hotel room, she tells each of them that the men they'd been with wanted her more, and that they got what they deserved. After they leave defeated, however, Zenia dies. The cause of her death is ambiguous, with suicide, an accidental drug overdose, and murder all likely possibilities. The novel itself leaves the reader questioning who was (or were) the victim(s) of life.

[edit] Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science

There is wide speculation that the book is, at least in part, a roman-a-clef, and that the Zenia character is based loosely on Barbara Amiel, the real-life journalist and wife of Lord Black. Among the others who have been sited as models are the writers Gwendolyn MacEwen, and Marian Engel.