3 ½ stars. It was good because it was thought provoking. But it had a downer quality. Not entertaining enough.

This book showed what Fran’s life was like during the first year after she ran from her violently abusive cop husband. She was in hiding. A group helped her by giving her a new name, id cards, a job, and an apartment. She’s not happy but doing ok. She makes a few friends. Her son is around age 11. He is doing ok but shows psychological scars from years of being around his mother getting beat up.

The end had more sadness than happiness, but it was ok. If you want happy endings and a feeling of being uplifted, you won’t want this. But it might be good if you want to think about the following. The goods and bads of kidnapping a child and keeping him away from the other parent. How one parent might find the other, or not find the other, and what to do if they find them. And how the child might have a need or desire for one or the other.

This was an Oprah Book Club selection. She prefers more serious books than I.

DATA:
Narrative mode: 1st person Fran. Story length: 291 pages. Swearing language: strong including religious swear words. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: about one. Setting: around 1990s in New York and Florida. Copyright: 1998. Genre: womens fiction, domestic abuse.

Ever read a book that you almost felt like you didn't have a right to criticize?

This book made me feel that way, and that is why I have put off writing a review. However, I told my teacher that I would eventually do it. I was required to pick a book out to read for my last week of high school in my Advanced Literature class that had some type of connection to my family. So, I chose this book. My family is quite familiar with this book's topic. I'm blessed in that I am not personally affiliated but I wanted to understand more about what some of the people who i love most have wen't through.

Just a little synopsis, this book is about a woman, Fran, who is in a relationship that is full of domestic violence at the hands of her NYPD husband, Bobby. However, its not just her who is being affected physically and mentally but her little son who is constantly hearing the abuse and the excuses that Fran says such as...Mommy had an accident. She decided to run and enters into what I consider to be some type of a batter woman's underground railroad.


Okay, so I believe that books that center around such a serious topic such as domestic violence, they have two duties.

1. You have to keep it real, because you are telling the story of not just the possibly fictional heroine but of every woman who has encountered this situation and picks up your book.


2.You have got to make the people who have never encountered domestic violence understand as much as possible. You got to reach deep within in them and make them cringe, you have to educate them. Through education comes liberation.


This book might have succeeded on goal 1, but for me it didn't succeed on goal 2. Might sound crazy, but this book wasn't sick enough for me. The beginning was pretty scary in that I was tense and was afraid for the heroine and her child. However, id say the next 80 percent of the book was just Fran and her Son in a new place and adjusting, making friends, and living. That was disappointing to me. With a title like Black and Blue, I expected to read about some horrid things in detail. I expected to cringe. You see, while Fran was living her "new life" it was obvious that her husband Bobby was looking every where for her. He was tormenting her family, and using all his cop connections. However, that little fact was not kept in the forefront of this book. Instead, we read about soccer practices and field trips and selling avon products. It would have been really cool if the book switched perspectives from Fran, to Bobby, to maybe even her Son. I just thought that as a journalist it would have been way more controversial, uncomfortable, and scary! Plus, Fran had a way of infuriating me. You see her decisions were reallllllly freaking stupid. It lead to her demise. I truly believe that you never know how strong you are until strong is the only choice you have. Fran needed to be strong and in some ways she was and in many ways she wasn't. It really angered me because I wanted her to get away, be safe, same for her son. However, it was pretty obvious as the story progressed that her decisions were gonna really come back to get her. However, I am not a battered woman and I cannot judge her to harshly because I know not. One thing I do know however, is that the battered women group that was helping her was not depicted right. These groups help woman, they give them support, they uplift them, they help them realize their power in this world. However, the one helping Fran was demeaning, power stripping, and overbearing...just like her husband was. Anyways, all that being said it is still a good book.

The strength of this book is in two things.

1. Quindlen has very lyrical writing. Her writing is so smooth and clear.

2. The perspective. Everything is from Fran's point of view. While, I didn't want it to be that way. It is still very cool. Fran is a abused and has had nobody to unburden her heart to. She had no therapy and therefore, what some people may not know is that you are reading the world through the eyes of a unfiltered battered woman. her thought process was so screwy and wrong in so many ways. However, this is quite possibly how an abused person thinks. It was eye opening in that
regard.


I believe this is a great book for someone who is young and has never read about domestic violence, someone who wants to read about it but not read something earth shattering and depressing beyond belief, and as a book club read with lots of discussion.

The main character was stupid from beginning to end, so it was difficult for me to muster up even a little sympathy for her tragic situation.

I would have rated it a 3 1/2, Good book but was expecting more depth.

I have to admit that I wasn't very surprised when I looked up this title on Internet Movie Database and saw that this book had been made into a movie. Nor was I surprised that it was a made for TV movie. And I'm going to take a wild shot in the dark and say it was specifically made for Lifetime... Television for Women. Because everything about this book kept bringing up that whispery woman's voice as the narrator. I kept hearing, "Anna Quindlen... A writer for women..." No joke.

But don't get me wrong. The book was good. Not life altering. Not wonderful. But a good read. At moments quite stereotypical, other times very absorbing.

Anna Quindlen has written very well-developed characters, and she clearly has an idea of what's going on. Either she has experienced spousal abuse, knows someone who has, or she has done thorough research... at least that what it felt to me. I have never experienced abuse, so someone who has and read this book may think otherwise. But this isn't their review, it's mine.

The book is long-winded though. At times clearly dragging. There are many run on sentences with no punctuation, which could very easily drive some people crazy. I didn't mind it too much because it fell in with the style of the narrative, but I often did have to go back and read it over to pick up the cadance of the sentence or paragraph. But back to the long-windedness. This book could have easily been shorter and not left anything direly important out and could have still gotten a clear message out. Our narrator repeats herself many times throughout the book. Possibly this is a style Quindlen is trying to make because a few times the narrator (our abused housewife Fran/Beth) speaks of how comforting pattern is, how reassuring it is to have a sort of daily ritual that takes place. Maybe this is why we often have her resurrect topics more than once.

Besides those few points, the book was a pretty good read. I do highly recommend this book to anyone who has suffered from domestic violence, because maybe from a different perspective, you can see exactly how important it is to go seek help. Or if you even know someone who is suffering from abuse, I advise you to tell them to go get help and suggest reading this book. Because maybe they, and you, can learn from this book that you can get out of the situation you're in and you can start a new and better life.

A memorable book, miserable but memorable...

a hardcover i got for only 150 Php on a thrift store. this was well worth it, because first and foremost it’s the kind of fiction that i tend to fall to and love. remember how it felt like after having read a good fiction like The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, The Lovely Bones and the likes? well, Black and Blue went exactly in the same vein with that. the feeling is just like drowning in its pages and riding the emotional rollercoaster till its very last page.it’s just amazing how this book connects to you with its plain honesty and all its humanity and pain. although the last part for me is quite depressing, there are still equal parts in it that will make you laugh and cry. the characters are all so utterly human. each has a way of telling and reminding the reader how it’s like once to be like a mother, a son, a friend, a father, a lover, a teacher, a neighbor, an enemy;and brings with them all its reality and drawbacks. the story centered at first on a marriage destroyed by domestic abuse, sprawling the plot into different directions, like how Fran Benedetto tried to be lost someplace and be Beth Crenshaw, thus giving us a raw depiction of real life through its vibrant casts. the story explores how endearing a mother’s love is of her son, and a son’s to his father. it talks a lot about a person’s attempt to live outside a box of fear; of loyalty, lust, and inexplicable connection among people, of a marriage founded on love and ruined by differences, of stories about friendships and family. Anna Quindlen is such a humane novelist. she has the right knocks on emotions and a big compassion at pulling at our heartstrings, leaving us readers in black and blue at the very last page. i give this a 4/5.

Wow! This book is going to stay with me for some time. What a powerful and profound intimate look at Domestic Violence and abuse. And however you think the plot will roll out; you are likely wrong. Such a great book.

Anna Quindlen's Black and Blue follows in Lolita's footsteps as a great work of psychological fiction. Psychological, because the author sketches in such a realistic fashion the profile of the abuser that I'm tempted to say her novel should be available in every domestic violence shelter under the category of "nonfiction." And yet, one can't forget that Black and Blue is above all a work of fiction, masterfully crafted. Its beginning echoes the first lines of Lolita, in fact, the novel which it resembles in style even more than in content.

The message of Black and Blue is similar to that of nonfiction books on dangerous men, which attempt to educate the public and empower the victims. Abusers are often charming. Abusers don't usually begin intimate relationships with overt abuse. Abusers can be entrancing and romantic, at least at first, during the wooing phase. Abuse doesn't get better; it escalates. Abusers push the limits of their victims' tolerance, little by little, until they dominate their targets. Abuse is above all a power game. The abusers are generally narcissistic individuals who lack empathy and want total control. The victims, however, aren't necessarily weak or passive. They can be strong and loving men and women, like Frannie Benedetto. Abuse is a tragedy without a silver lining.

It's one thing to read this familiar message in self-help books and pamphlets and quite another to feel it in a great work of fiction. From the very first lines, Black and Blue gets under your skin. It reveals the mindset of both abuser and abused. It traces the emotional scars of the child or children who have to endure these sad family dynamics. "My son scarcely ever cries. And his smile comes so seldom that it's like bright sunshine on winter snow, blinding and strange." (26). Such beautiful language for such ugly facts... Perhaps this is the best way to bring the abuse to life for others. Above all, Black and Blue puts you in the shoes of all those who have the courage to run away from it without ever looking back.

Why doesn't she leave him? How could a woman who is being abused stay with a man like that?
Step inside the life of "Fran, Frannie, Fran", the last words she always hears before the fists descend.
Take the opportunity to walk a mile or two in her shoes before judging.
Depressingly realistic story of how, why, what now in the life of an abused woman.

Most true-to-life fictional account of abuse I've read.

(4'7