So--I'd put Anna Quindlen on my short list of favorite authors, for a half-dozen reasons with the most important being her lucid, lyrical writing. Every Quindlen book I've read turns a commonplace story (and domestic violence is as commonplace as it gets) into a gorgeously rendered, delicately layered case study of ordinary life events. In many ways, Anna Quindlen is the diametric opposite of the Lifetime movie writing--none of her characters are all bad or all good, and her plots aren't predictable tragedies or feel-good endings.

In "Black and Blue" Quindlen does a really good job of explaining how love and attraction and family get in the way of personal dignity and self-determination. Even a bad-dude character like Bobby is made human, and the life Fran built with him a mix of the good--her son, her home, her job--and the terrifying. I thought the story ended the only way that it could and the last chapter was luminous.

This is what happens when you wander into a subpar bookstore looking for anything to read because you just finished a book and the prospect of being on MUNI bookless is something that you would rather not attempt, because people smell and are sweaty and you need something to take your attention from that. So I got this book, Black and Blue, which was an Oprah Book Club nominee in 1999. Oprah, obviously your tastes are grown, because five pages in I was like - Holy Cow, I am reading a Lifetime movie. This is the story of a nurse wife who flees with her child from her abusive cop husband. Again, LIFETIME!!! I don’t know why I even bothered to finish it, but I blame the fact that sometimes you are pulled into chickdom with a current so strong that any attempt to fight it would result in drowning. So with the flow I went, and jeez, this book is such bad fluff. I don’t recommend it to anyone, and I advise all to enter a bookstore with a plan, or you will find yourself reading 1999 Oprah nominee Lifetime Movie Channel crap.

Black and Blue portrays the plight of an abused wife who, after years of living in domestic terror and shame, finally decides to flee with her son to a new, anonymous life. As the bruises from her most recent, most violent, encounter heal, her new life provides the peace and safety for her to heal emotionally, to discover who she really is underneath the trauma she’s been surviving. In particular, she uses the time to bond with her son and to watch carefully for signs that he, too, will become an abuser like his father, like his father’s father before him…Can they break this tragic cycle? Quindlen’s chilling tale explores the complexities of obsessive love, how it seeks to own and subdue another person in order to satisfy horrible and insatiable inner needs. Though most couples agree to premarital counseling before getting married, I wonder if reading a book like this might give women insight into what the seeds of abuse look like before it blooms after the honeymoon is over.

If you have been lucky enough never to have been hit by a man, Anna Quindlen Black and Blue is written so that you can walk in a beaten woman’s shoes. No intelligent woman would ever stay with a man who hits her, right? But love does many things to a person and intelligence is usually the first thing that goes.

No one argues that love and lust of a woman, such as the beautiful Helen, which poets have written about for centuries, could launch a thousand ships. So why is it so amazing to think that a woman is courageous enough to think that if she is good enough, strong enough, loves him enough, that he will never hurt her again. Women are caregivers by nature. If they are in love with a man – regardless of how twisted the love is – she believes that she can fix him if she just gives him what he needs. All she has to do is figure him out. And fix him. Or fix herself. Somewhere along the line the problem switches from him to you. It becomes easier to believe the problem lies at your own feet.

The lucky ones are the ones who finally wake up. The ones who are strong enough to wake up before they die both inside and permanently. Bruises heal. Your soul can only take so many beatings before it dies.

There was only one line that I disagreed with. Frannie mentioned that she was beginning to forget Bobby’s voice within that first year. She never would. You never do! You hear his voice calling for you in phrases that other people say when you least expect it. It comes at you, and grabs you around your neck like quick moving fog. It makes your skin tingle. It haunts you in your sleep like a ghost whisper. The slamming of the door from a strong, windy day still makes you jump and duck, before the next hit, kick, slap, and punch. Once you learn those instincts, they never leave you. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle. Some lessons are for life.

Anna is right about one big thing though. You spend years covering up that you are in a violent relationship and then you spend the rest of life covering up that you were a battered woman. No one wants that label. I can talk about it to my husband sometimes in small patches. I can talk about it to my guy friends detached as if it was some other woman. However, I can’t tell my girlfriends. That’s too shameful. No one battered woman wants to see the pity and shame in another woman’s eyes. It is just another secret you learn to live with forever. Some bruises never heal.

Maybe reading books like Black and Blue will help with the healing.

This could have been a short story, and I think it would have been more enjoyable as such. It is well written, but empty of the depth that is expected in a novel of this size. Not sustaining of my interest, much like the guilty boredom one feels after listening to the same series of woeful stories told by a down-on-her-luck friend week after week, month after month.
I should have known given the dust jacket of this used bookstore find praises her book One True Thing rather than the book it envelopes. Odd, but not noticed until after reading the first chapter and wondering what I was in store for. It is also an Oprah book club book, which makes me question how loosely such a popular recommendation is given.
Overall not worth the time.

My wife and I listened to this on a trip to Texas and while it held our interest was just not as good as some others out there.

Fran Benedetto is a battered wife. She’s an RN whose abusive husband is a cop, and she has seen to what little effect orders of protection have. In fact, three women she had seen in the emergency room after being battered by their husbands of boyfriends were later killed by them despite the supposed legal remedy. So when Bobby, her husband, really smashes her about the face, she enlists the support of Patty Bancroft, the organizer and founder of an agency that relocates women and creates new identities for them so they can escape from their abusive partners.

Her torment lies in the fact that she still loves her husband and his passion. He had a brooding and magnetic personality and loved their son Robert, but his drinking and rages had become more and more violent. She escapes with Robert, a child of about twelve and settles in with a new identity in Florida. She constantly worries that her husband will seek her out and kill her. She knows he has the resources and connections to find her if he wants to. Despite her new name, new job, and new location, everything she does is tempered by the realization that Bobby could show up at any time to take away Robert and beat her again.

Quindlan renders the horrors of spousal abuse so realistically one has to wonder if she herself had perhaps been a battered spouse. There is a strong tension throughout the novel for the reader who wonders just when everything will fall apart and why. It remains a tragedy that society has yet to find a better way to deal with the terrible plight of women who find themselves in such a tragic situation.

This book compelled me to read but I didn't really like it. I was never really engaged with Beth and the writing style made it very difficult to empathize with her. The book is about domestic violence and a woman's escape and her new life, but so much of it is simply within Beth's head it is difficult to really get caught up in the story. It's almost like the reader is just thinking along with Beth and it's dull, everyday thoughts. Her relationships with the people she meets in La Plata are shallow and superficial and even her relationship with her son comes second to her self indulgent thought processes.

I was told I would love this book. I'm actually surprised I finished it considering how little investment I had in the story.

I decided to give this author a try and although the plot had promise, the book didn't deliver. I was very disappointed because this book could've been so much better. I didn't like the writing style of this author. The characters had little communication or talking scenes. Most of the book was flashbacks and sometimes I had to re-read a scene twice because the author was in the present, then she went to a flashback that had absolutely nothing to do with the scene she was writing about in the 1st place. I can usually read a book in 3-5 days, but this one took me 2 weeks since it was so slow. The main character wasn't likeable to me and she was somewhat annoying. I don't know if I will read another book by this author which is a shame because I hear so many great reviews about her. I just don't like her writing style, she was "all over the place". :(

Anna Quindlen paints a vivid picture of what it is like to be a 'battered wife'. Fran is married to Bobby Benedetto her first love, a handsome cop. They have a son called Robert and they seem, to the outside world, to be the perfect family. Fran however lives in fear of the next beating from Bobby. When he beats her so badly that her face is unrecognisable she decides that she must leave. Fran contacts a woman called Patty Bancroft who is head of an organisation that helps women in Fran's situation to escape. Patty has volunteer helpers all across America and they are able to provide transport, new papers and identities for abused women enabling them to make a fresh start. Fran finds herself, with her son, at the other end of the country; they have to start a new life with nothing to their names other than what has been given to them by the charity.
The book tells us what it is like to constantly look over your shoulder in fear of seeing that familiar face, or hearing a noise in the night. Fran and her son struggle to integrate into the new community and make new friends but eventually they start to settle in and things start to feel a little better.
The story is quite fast paced at the beginning but then, for me, seemed to plateau somewhat in the middle with a great deal of description of the every day happenings of the mother and son. I felt that more time should have been given to the end of the story which was concluded in the last short chapter. A lot more detail could have been given about the events of the last couple of years rather than skipping to the present time.
I would be interested to know if such an organisation does exist; is there a lady like Patty Bancroft? Fran makes a comment about what a small country the USA is to disappear in, this made me think what would it be like for a woman trying to disappear in England!

It started out good but I feel is slow going and dragged out a bit. I didn't care for how it ended either.I was an good book but nothing great.

My mom and I had a conversation about sad books recently. She said that reading sad stories does not bother her. That if she can identify with the main character and their problems, it only helps her because she feels that she's not alone, that other people have similar issues. My reaction to sad books is a little different. When I can identify with the main character who is going through tough times, it brings me down and I have to keep reminding myself that it's just a book.
That being said, if you know what domestic violence is and you think that identifying with the main character might help you, go ahead and read this book. Otherwise, stay away.
It makes me wonder if Anna Quindlen experienced domestic violence herself or did an excellent research on it, because the way she describes what the woman in this book is feeling and thinking is absolutely on point.

Shocked by the ending. I give Quindlen credit for not going the "picture perfect" route. Good read