Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen Paperback Book

Details

Rent Black and Blue

Author: Anna Quindlen

Format: Mass Market Paperback

Publisher: Bantam Books

Published: Feb 1999

Genre: Fiction - General

Retail Price: $7.99

Pages: 384

Synopsis

Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 1998: 'The first time my husband hit me I was nineteen years old,' begins Fran Benedetto, the broken heroine of Anna Quindlen's Black and Blue. With one sweeping sentence, the door to an abused and tortured world is swung wide open and the psyche of a crushed and tattered self-image exposed. 'Frannie, Frannie, Fran'--as Bobby Benedetto liked to call her before smashing her into kitchen appliances--was a young, energetic nursing student when she met her husband-to-be at a local Brooklyn bar. She was instantly captivated by his dark, brooding looks and magnetic personality, but her fascination soon solidified into a marital prison sentence of incessant abuse and the destruction of her own identity. After an especially horrific beating and rape, Fran realizes that the next attack could be the last. Fearing her son would be left alone with Bobby, she escapes one morning with her child. Fran's salvation comes in the form of Patty Bancroft and Co., a relocation agency for abused women that touts better service than the witness protection program. Armed only with a phone number, a few hundred dollars, and the help of several anonymous volunteers, Fran begins a new life. The agency relocates her to Florida, where she becomes Beth Crenshaw, a recently divorced home-care assistant from Delaware. Fran and her son adapt, meeting challenges with unexpected resilience and resolve until their past returns to haunt them. Quindlen renders the intricacies of spousal abuse with eerie accuracy, taking the reader deep within the realm of dysfunctional human ties. However, her vivid descriptions of abuse, emotional disintegration, and acute loneliness at times numb the reader with their realism.

View descriptions at Amazon.com

Recommended

The Heart Is a Lonely...
by Carson McCullers

With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its...

Open House (Oprah's Book...
by Elizabeth Berg

Struggling to come to terms with her husband's abandonment, Samantha sets out to construct a new life for herself and her eleven-year-old son and to...

While I Was Gone (Oprah's...
by Sue Miller

While I Was Gone'...gives Miller the chance to limn a '60s youth, an initially contented marriage and, eventually, a marriage struggling to regain its...

Midwives (Oprah's Book...
by Chris Bohjalian

Bohjalian blends some provocative moral, medical, and political issues into a classic coming-of-age story....Rich in moral ambiguity, informative to a...

Ellen Foster (Oprah's...
by Kaye Gibbons

An 11-year-old girl narrates this award-winning first novel. Ellen witnesses her beloved mother's suicide and is forced to live with her alcoholic...

Crow Lake (Today Show...
by Mary Lawson

Canadian writer Mary Lawson's debut novel is a beautifully crafted and shimmering tale of love, death, and redemption. The story, narrated by ...

The Reader
by Bernhard Schlink

A teenage boy named Michael is befriended by Hanna, a mysterious older married woman. Years later as a law student, he attends a criminal trial in...

Reviews

BookLender review by Nicole on 2007-11-05 01:22:57

her description of the abuse, fear and emotion are excellent, but the actual story is frustrating and splotchy