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Title: Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen ISBN: 0-440-22610-4 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 02 February, 1999 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.92 (403 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: You can run, but can you hide?
Comment: [Warning: a review below by "Drea248" unwittingly divulges a crucial element in the story line. Though a positive review, if you plan on reading this book, avoid the review.]
Anna Quindlan's latest work of fiction "Black and Blue" has the potential to do what few so called "women's books" are able to accomplish, have an intrinsic appeal which serves both genders. This is a story with the ability to be accessible on many levels and that is one of its strengths.
This is a book about women, about children, about men, about the building up and breaking down of relationships, about strength and weakness, about truth, about secrets, about courage, and about trust. It is enlightening, entertaining, and exciting; once started it will be difficult to put down. This is not an easy book to read or forget.
The issues raised, some resolved some not, remind us of the frailties and shortcomings we experience in our own lives. Hopefully the main topic is one with which many are personally unfamiliar. The description of the effort involved to achieve escape velocity from the gravitational pull of an old life is simultaneously interesting and frightening. But can you really escape?
This is the focal point of the story. The day-to-day events of the principal characters as they establish their new lives is beautifully and touchingly developed in every way, you almost forget how the main characters arrived where they are. Present experiences are cleverly woven with past memories throughout the narrative. However, this is a story that also has all of the underlying tension and menace of a good suspense novel, neither of which are ever very far from the surface.
Rating: 5
Summary: heartbreaking
Comment: I'm glad the reader from Baltimore pointed out the fact that victims of abuse habitually hold themselves at a distance from others. I thought this was a real strength of Quindlen's characterization of Fran, and it does account for the distance some readers may feel from her. I can't imagine not sympathizing with Fran's plight, myself, though, as I often felt I was actually inside her head. I was especially stunned by the reader who complained that the book is "depressing" (clearly meaning this as a weakness). A person who would make this complaint when women and children live this horror every day should be ashamed. Quindlen's novel is one of the most moving I've read in years; in fact, I cried through most of the last audiotape. I found Mrs. Leavitt's story about meeting her husband particularly astonishing; it made me gasp, and little fiction is that powerful. I also feel that Quindlen's understand of young Robert's situation is dead on. Like many other readers, I got through the novel quickly, in less than 24 hours. Lili Taylor's voice is exactly right for Beth; I've seldom heard a narrator so right. I look forward to teaching this novel in my women's literature class.
Rating: 1
Summary: A Stupid Protagonist
Comment: The main character made so many stupid mistakes and had such severe character flaws herself, that I had to struggle a few times to sympathize with her. She admits that when she married her husband, she realized it was 'inevitable' that he would beat her -- yet she not only went ahead and married him, but she had a child, knowing this child would be exposed to the violence. When she meets a decent guy, she admits that the guy is rather dull compared to her ex-husband -- the subtext being that she misses getting beaten up?
Most horrifying to me: She muses that if her son grows up to marry a woman and then beats that woman... she will not really care. She will not sympathize with the woman, because she will never be able to see any wrong in her son. This is one sick puppy, yo. And her sickness clearly pre-dates the abusive marriage, so it's not like her husband 'twisted' her.
I resented how she seemed hostile to the very people who were helping her out of her abusive situation. They got her a new identity, moved her to another state, supported her -- she didn't even have to work unless he wanted to -- and yet she complained about how superior they must feel for helping little pathetic her -- a paranoid feeling that was only in her own head.
Make no mistake -- I'm sympathetic to any abuse victim, but this one was such an idiot it would have been hard for ME not to knock her around a little.
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Title: A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons ISBN: 0375703063 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 05 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: One True Thing by Anna Quindlen ISBN: 044022103X Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage ISBN: 038079487X Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb ISBN: 0671021001 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: While I Was Gone by Sue Miller, Sue Miller ISBN: 0345443284 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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