Nemesis for three friends.

Bloomsbury, #15.99 (pp 470)

MARGARET Atwood avoids simple labelling. As a woman writer she has

jinked critical expectations by refusing to write exclusively from the

established feminist war zones of home, kitchen, and bedroom.

More than any other contemporary writer, she has tried to combine the

literary novel with populist genres. She has written a romantic spy

story and feminist science-fiction. Now comes something of a ghost

story.

The Robber Bride also defies genres. At the heart are three women and

their nemesis, Zenia, who has severely damaged their lives, betrayed

their trust, exploited their weaknesses, and almost ruined their

relationships with men. The trio meet for lunch once a month. They do

not have much in common, other than a shared catastrophe. They have

Zenia in common.

They have changed their names, using abbreviated versions or other

names from those they were given. Tony was Antonia, Charis was Karen,

and Rosalind became Roz. They are damaged, compromised, or both. All are

products of the Second World War, displaced people whose families

arrived in Canada, the land of opportunity, fleeing the disasters of

Europe.

Roz's father returned with a fortune made from trading stolen works of

art. Antonia's mother abandoned her to her father's despair and

drunkenness. Charis's mother also left her daughter; following a mental

collapse, she abandoned the child to an uncle who abused her. This

portrayal, especially the sensitive child's sufferings, is conveyed with

a relentless honesty.

The women can be seen as composites of a single person, each lacks

something the others provide. By the same standard Zenia is a

significant reference, something they can blame for their present state,

a convenient scapegoat. One of the most ingenious aspects of this

multi-faceted book is the way Zenia shifts. She is surely a monster, but

who created her? Is she empirically awful or have the women demonised

her to fit their requirements? They either invited her into their lives,

or blame her for what had already happened.

Most of this book is open to question. The women's accounts of

themselves are suspicious, they often seem not to like each other and

their displacement is manifest in a number of ways. Early on, when Tony

leaves her house to meet the others for lunch, she lingers on the corner

of her street, gazing back at her home; ''a solid house, reassuring.''

Her husband West, is working inside, she hasn't told him whom she is

meeting for lunch, and is shocked when she finds what she supposes is

Zenia's telephone number in his address book.

Like the other male characters, West is shadowier, more of a cipher,

less well drawn; but this is a book about women and they are wonderfully

realised.

Margaret Atwood is tellingly adroit in penetrating other lives.

Perhaps she distributes details of her own life; for the effect appears

to owe more to autobiography than fiction. Even where Zenia is concerned

-- and she is the most misplaced of all the women -- there is a

precision, a web of ironic comparison and insight that not only drives

the narrative, making it compellingly readable, but which gives the

story an authenticity, making one believe it must have happened; if not

this then something very like it. There is an intriguing mixture of

shapely plot and intimate detail, layered with delightful contrasts and

telling similarities between the characters.

Tony is a military historian who collects and presses flowers from the

world's battlefields. Charis is a New Age mystic who works in a shop

called Radiance. Her life is being undermined by her daughter. Charis

lives on an island and thinks her daughter is hard, just as others used

to think she was hard. Roz is the more direct of the three, concerned

with appearance, and constantly trying to improve the others. It is

difficult to imagine her having friends outside this circle.

They meet for lunch in The Toxique, one of their favourite places.

Tony feels a shiver, looks up, and finds Zenia standing behind her, as

beautiful as ever. There are three accounts of Zenia's origins, in

Russia, Romania, and Berlin, all fictional. The women share an

experience of Zenia's death, having attended her funeral. They don't

talk of her anymore, not since they buried her, yet she inhabits their

lives, living in the silence that surrounds her. They can't let go. This

novel concerns the return of the living dead.