The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood

First published in 1993, “The Robber Bride” was the eighth novel by Margaret Atwood, distinguished Canadian novelist, poet and short-story writer. Born in Ottawa in 1939, Atwood is Canada’s most eminent writer, the author of such acclaimed novels as “Alias Grace”, “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Cat’s Eye”. “The Robber Bride” is, in my view, one of her finest achievements. “The Robber Bride” takes as its inspiration the Brothers Grimm fairytale of the Robber Bridegroom, in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair in order to devour them. Atwood’s version turns this on its head in creating the character of Zenia, a jaw-droppingly malevolent ...  Read the complete review

Margaret Atwood is an astonishingly good writer. She excels in intricate construction and hers is a clear, seemingly effortless transparency of the language: like if it wasn`t there, like if nothing mediated between the reader and the tale. She is so good that despite the fact that she mostly writes about women, from a female perspective and with a noticeable feminist slant, her writing transcends the boundaries of what is often described as `female fiction`. In Polish we have no expression for `chick-lit`, there is, however, one of `menstrual literature` which applies to more serious examples of prose written for and by women. On the surface, ...  Read the complete review