The WW Book Club
Is Fran, the fugitive battered wife in Anna Quindlen's contribution to Oprah's book club, a hero, a victim or an idiot?
BY BROOKE DeNISCO, CHRISTINA MELANDER AND AUDREY VAN BUSKIRK
bdenisco@wweek.com, melander@wweek.com, avanbuskirk@wweek.com Black and Blue
by Anna Quindlen
Random House, 293 pages, $23, ISBN 0.375.50051.0 The first and last sentences of former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen's latest novel, Black and Blue, are similarly wistful in tone: "The first time my husband hit me I was nineteen years old. One sentence and I'm lost." "Everyone says that I did the right thing, that I shouldn't look back, that I had no choice. Maybe they're right. I still don't know." After decades of abuse from her husband, a macho cop named Bobby, Fran and her 10-year-old son, Robert, enter a privately run protection program for battered wives. Fran dyes her hair, picks up a new name and Social Security number, and moves from her comfortable Brooklyn home to a dingy Florida apartment. Since it is an Oprah book, and it's written in the fine, crisp style Quindlen's many fans adore, Black and Blue is sure to be well read--it's currently No. 8 on the amazon.com bestseller list. In the spirit of Ms. Winfrey, three of us read Black and Blue and held our own book-group meeting in the office. AVB: It made sense to me that Fran left her husband. But her kid was so horrible, I wished she had left him behind, too. I think it's weird that Anna Quindlen spends this whole book explaining the question of how a woman can stay with an abusive husband, but she doesn't consider whether or not you should stay with an abusive kid. Unconditional love for a husband is demonized, but you're expected to have unconditional love for your kid. What about the parents of Kip Kinkel? If they had survived his murder attempt, would they still have to stand by him? CM: Robert is no Kip Kinkel. I didn't think he was awful. Anyway, you expect different things from an adult than a kid. It's that same argument: How much are you a product of your environment, and how much is innate? AVB: It was implied that Bobby's mother was beaten by Bobby's father. So, Bobby was as much a victim of his environment as Robert. By your argument, Fran should have stayed with her husband. CM: Yeah, but people pull themselves out of that all the time. As you grow up, you're exposed to other things and you change. AVB: I just think it's troubling that women are expected to subjugate themselves to their children. Fran was scared of Robert, just like she was scared of Bobby. BD: The other thing that is implied is that Fran got off on Bobby's power and the fact that he was a cop. She didn't want to be in charge. She wanted him to take care of her. CM: Fran wanted to be defined by someone else because she had to be a caretaker for her family when she was growing up. The thing I hated was how Bobby always said, "What are you gonna do, call the cops?" AVB: I guess at a certain point it's flattering if your husband's really jealous. Anyway, another thing I didn't like was the whole Mike character [Fran's new boyfriend in Florida]. He's this passive, boring, loser guy. It's depressing that the book gives only these two character extremes as her choices. BD: Quindlen definitely emphasizes the ups and downs of power: The person in power is scary, and the person who's not is pretty pathetic...there's no sexual attraction there. Fran was totally not into having sex with Mike. How many love affairs have you had where you go months and months without even making out with the person? AVB: Right, Fran didn't change. Her solution to being beaten was to turn off her personality and sexuality. I didn't come away from it thinking she was improved. At the end she said she'd love her son even if he beat his girlfriend. She didn't progress. CM: I think she did progress. Even if she wasn't happier at the end, she was a lot better off. I think the book did a good, realistic, understandable job of explaining being a battered wife. It's not a hopeful book. It makes you wonder if anyone can ever recover from abuse. AVB: I liked the character of the Holocaust survivor Fran took care of when she got that awful job as a home health-care helper. That woman was able to accept that horrible things had happened to her and move on with her life. She decided to be happy. BD: Fran's friend Cindy was sort of like that, too, except instead of living through terrible things, she had to live through being so normal. Fran, on the other hand, felt like she would be just as unhappy being normal as being in a horrible situation. And she was in a horrible situation, even after she moved. The town in Florida was so vividly crappy. Fran had a reason to be there, but it's amazing that other people chose to live there. AVB: The people there made no reference to the outside world. It's like they weren't connected to any greater reality. BD: Holidays in the book were so horrible. They made you wonder if it's even worth living when you're in a witness-protection-type program. AVB: I think there's a real fear in society now of being cut off and alone like that, witness protection or not. CM: I thought Cindy's daughter Chelsea, who was scared of everything, was a really interesting character. Especially how she felt vindicated when that kid fell off the ride. She was sort of happy, or at least relieved, that there was a reason to be scared, that bad things do happen. AVB: Chelsea is almost a metaphor for Fran. She was so scared, it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, Fran endured 40 years of heartbreak just to end up a sad suburban housewife. |
