By Margaret Atwood.
This is one of those books that seems to be generally regarded as good. I finally got around to reading it, and... I don't know.
The plot: Zenia is an evil, evil woman. She sweeps into your life, befriends you, tells you lies, finds some way to screw you, steals your man, and then throws him back like a bad fish. Tony, Charis, and Roz went to college with Zenia and over the last few decades, all of them have been screwed by her in one way or another, and they became friends over it. When they heard that Zenia had been blown up, they all went to her funeral and quietly celebrated. Then as they're having lunch in a place called The Toxique (note: don't go to ANYWHERE with a name like this!), Zenia swans in, clearly not freaking dead.
What do you do now?
Now, overall, this isn't a bad plot idea. However, I kind of have issues with how the book was structured.
For example: we start out the book telling about Tony's tedious life and day, slowly, ending with her sighting of Zenia at The Toxique. Then we backtrack and do the same damn thing for Charis's day, ending with the sighting of Zenia at The Toxique. Then Roz. This is how the first 118 pages or so goes. And it's BORING. I don't know these women yet, and I'm not interested enough in their tedious daily life yet to even care. And I don't like how the sighting of Zenia had to be rehashed three times. If I hadn't been on vacation in the desert with not a lot going on at the moment in time I was reading it, I probably wouldn't have kept on reading. Hell, if I'd bothered to flip through it at the bookstore before buying it, I wouldn't have due to that deadly start.
The book actually starts 118ish pages in, when we go back in time and find out exactly how Tony was screwed in college, followed by Charis, followed by Roz. That's where the novel gets interesting. I finally cared about the characters during that section, rather than not caring at the start. Also, some of Zenia's methods are darned clever, such as... well, check the spoiler cut.*
And then at the end, when everyone knows that Zenia's around again, they're faced with the question of "What do I do now?" and "Is Zenia going to screw me again?"** I'm mostly pleased at how the women react this time around.
However, in addition to the weak beginning (and the author does insist on rehashing everything three times in the same style, like how and when she does childhood flashbacks and confrontations), this is one of those books where you are all, "Is there any motivation to Zenia beyond "I'm just evil and screwing people is what I do?" And well, the author doesn't give any. You find out VERY few true facts about the woman***, and she's just Pure Evil. I wish there had been some more damn depth to this beyond "Evil woman screws people." Plenty of books have that sort of plot, and from what I hear (plus the one book of hers I already read), this author seems like she could do better than that.
I'm going to give it three stars. It's at least a fairly interesting read. Eventually. If you skip ahead and go to the "Black Enamel" section where the victimization acts start, anyway.
Spoiler space
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* For example: faking a case of cancer by not eating any Vitamin C so she gives herself a case of scurvy. WHAT?! I also really liked the revelation that even though Zenia stole West from Tony, she wasn't doing it through her magical sex skills... she was claiming to be frigid. Hoo boy. I actually believed West when he said he liked Toby better after dealing with Zenia.
** It's kind of amazing that Zenia is pretty much literally pulling the same kind of con on all of them AGAIN. "Oh, can I stay at your house with West again?" "Oh, I'm sick again." "Oh, instead of screwing your now-dead husband, I'm screwing your teenage son!" (Except not, because the kid is secretly gay. Hah.) Frankly, if any of the women HADN'T wised up after that I would have wanted to bitchslap them for stupidity.
** After she's dead, you find out that she actually HAD cancer this time, and it seems that she was faking her own murder to frame one or all of them. This is way glossed over, though. And I think uh, shouldn't have been!
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