The Robber Bride

By Margaret Atwood

One of the worst books I've ever read. I didn't really like any of it. Of course, being the person I am, I still read all 466 pages in the hopes that it would get better. It didn't.

Basically, three women are close friends because they have all been the victims of Zenia, a woman who exploits them before she takes their men and all the rest of the things (people) that mean the most to them. They are all relieved at word of her death, they go to her funeral, and help bury her ashes. Then, as they are having lunch together, in she walks.

No ghostly stuff or anything, she just faked her death.

A few quotes I (kinda) liked:

"War is what happens when language fails."

"She likes her job well enough as jobs go, but it's a job, and every job has shackles attached to it. Square brackets. So she tries to plan a small respite for each day, a small joy, something extra."

"She feels something tugging at her, some intuition...a sinking feeling. Not something violent, like an explosion or fire. Something else. She often has these feelings, but half of them aren't dependable." Shanita says it's because she is picking up a lot of stations, cosmic static."

"She looks at her watch: her kids are running late, but not very late. They take after her: she has always had a flexible sense of time."

"Nature abhors a vacuum, thinks Tony. How inconvenient. Otherwise, we vacuums might lead our lives in relative security."

"She's just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it's not, it's the worst, it's the worst feeling there is- incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control."

"I was never religious, he says. Like I always said- who owns God? If there was no religions there won't be all this trouble. No more wars."