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| Paperback ©1998 | -- |
Man-woman relationships. Fiction.
Abused wives. Fiction.
Mothers and sons. Florida. Fiction.
Florida. Fiction.
Quindlen, a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist as well as a best-selling novelist, is passionately engaged in mapping the inner storms that accompany crises, big crises, that is, such as helping a loved one die, the theme of One True Thing (1994), and, in her third novel, the unending trauma of domestic violence. Fran Benedetto married the very first man she fell for, Bobby, a New York City policeman, and they were deliciously in love for a while, long enough to have a son. But Bobby turned out to be "tasty but dangerous," and Fran, a nurse familiar with the drill, found herself trapped in the classic weather pattern of domestic abuse: abrupt and irrational arguments over nothing followed by beatings, which, over the years, become increasingly severe. Finally, Fran seeks help and is rescued by members of what is essentially a witness-protection program for battered women. She and her young son are given new identities and sent to a dumpy apartment complex in a small Florida town. Quindlen tracks every phase of their suffering, from the adrenalin rush of their escape to the shock at finding themselves cut off from everything familiar, to the horror of recognizing that neither Fran's fear of her husband nor her son's love and longing for his father will ever diminish. Quindlen's prose is precise and unrelenting as she refuses to gloss over the pain Fran learns somehow to live with, anguish that causes her to ask over and over again, "What if?" (Reviewed December 15, 1997)
Kirkus ReviewsPulitzerwinning columnist and novelist Quindlen (One True Thing, 1994, etc.) now takes a talk-show staplespousal abuseand gives it a compelling immediacy in a refreshingly wise and truth- telling novel about life and marriage. Frannie, a nurse, fell deeply in love with Bobby, a handsome New York cop who at the time seemed attractively tasty and dangerous,'' as well as kind and thoughtful. But after 17 years of marriage, Bobby has become more dangerous than appealing. Tired of being beaten up, and now coping with a broken nose, Fran takes her ten-year-old son Robert and flees their Brooklyn home. Helped by a women's organization, she and Robert are given new identities and a new place to live: a duplex in Florida. Now known as Beth Crenshaw, Frannie also tries to make a new life for herself and Robert, whom she loves with a fierce and protective devotion. She finds a good friend in the resilient Cindy and a satisfying job as a visiting health aide. She grows close to her patients, especially Mrs. Levitt, a Holocaust survivor. But Frannie can't relax her vigilance: Bobby has resources and investigating tools that might make it easy to find her, and so while her life is increasingly normalshe dates Mike, Robert's nice soccer coachshe's still afraid. The tension is nail-biting but nicely complemented by perceptive insights, as in Frannie's meditation thatwhenever I thought about leaving, I thought about leaving my house . . . balloon shades and miniblinds . . . mugs for the coffee . . . small things; routine, order that's what kept me there for the longest time.'' Inevitably, Bobby catches up with her and exacts a terrible revenge, but an appropriately bittersweet ending gives Fran, who'll always wonder whether she was right to flee, a new love and life. Quindlen writes about women as they really areneither helpless victims nor angry polemicists, but intelligent human beings struggling to do what's right for those they love and for themselves. A book to read and savor. (Author tour)"
YA--This powerfully written story grips readers from the very first page. Fran and Bobby are crazy about one another from the moment they first meet, but his violent nature reveals itself even before they are married. Later, the "accidents" become more and more frequent and harder to hide: a broken collarbone, a split lip, a black eye. Finally, Fran escapes the abusive marriage, but by then she is damaged both inside and out. Assisted by a group that aids battered women, she flees with her 10-year-old son, Robert, who knows the truth but is reluctant to believe that the father who loves him so much could beat his mother so badly. Fran begins a new life with a new identity, but she lives in fear, knowing that Bobby won't rest until he finds them. Also, Robert longs for his father. Love between parent and child, coming to grips with the difference between passion and love, the importance of honesty in relationships, and self-knowledge as an essential part of healing--YAs can learn much about these and other themes in this novel about a shattered family and a strong woman determined to rebuild her life.--Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
ALA Booklist (Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 CST 1997)
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One sentence and I'm lost. One sentence and I can hear his voice in my head, that butterscotch-syrup voice that made goose bumps rise on my arms when I was young, that turned all of my skin warm and alive with a sibilant S, the drawling vowels, its shocking fricatives. It always sounded like a whisper, the way he talked, the intimacy of it, the way the words seemed to go into your guts, your head, your heart. "Geez, Bob," one of the guys would say, "you should have been a radio announcer. You should have done those voice-over things for commercials." It was like a genie, wafting purple and smoky from the lamp, Bobby's voice, or perfume when you took the glass stopper out of the bottle.
I remember going to court once when Bobby was a witness in a case. It was eleven, maybe twelve years ago, before Robert was born, before my collarbone was broken, and my nose, which hasn't healed quite right because I set it myself, looking in the bathroom mirror in the middle of the night, petals of adhesive tape fringing the frame. Bobby wanted me to come to court when he was testifying because it was a famous case at the time, although one famous case succeeds another in New York City the way one pinky-gold sunset over the sludge of the Hudson River fades and blooms, brand-new each night. A fifteen-year-old boy from Brooklyn was accused of raping a Dominican nun at knifepoint and then asking her to pray for him. His attorney said it was a lie, that the kid had had no idea that the woman in the aqua double-knit pants and the striped blouse was a nun, that the sex was consensual, though the nun was sixty-two and paste-waxing a floor in a shelter at the time. They took paste wax from the knees of the kid's pants, brought in the paste-wax manufacturer to do a chemical comparison.
The lawyer was an old guy with a storefront in a bad neighborhood, I remember, and the kid's mother had scraped together the money to hire him because Legal Aid had sent a black court-appointed and she was convinced that her son needed a white lawyer to win his case. Half-blind, hungover, dandruff on the shoulders of his gray suit like a dusting of snow, the kid's attorney was stupid enough to call the kid as a witness and to ask why he had confessed to a crime he hadn't committed.
"There was this cop in the room," the boy said, real low, his broad forehead tipped toward the microphone, his fingers playing idly with his bottom lip, so that his words were a little muffled. "He don't ask none of the questions. He just kept hassling me, man. Like he just keeps saying, "Tell us what you did, Tyrone. Tell us what you did." It was like he hypnotized me, man. He just kept saying it over and over. I couldn't get away from him."
The jury believed that Tyrone Biggs had done the rape, and so did everybody else in New York who read the tabloids, watched the news. So did the judge, who gave him the maximum, eight to fifteen years, and called him "a boil on the body of humanity." But I knew that while Tyrone was lying about the rape he was telling the truth about that police officer, because I lived with that voice every day, had been hypnotized by it myself. I knew what it could do, how it could sound. It went down into your soul, like a confessor, like a seducer, saying, "Tell me. Tell me." Frannie, Frannie, Fran, he'd croon, whisper, sing.
Sometimes Bobby even made me believe that I was guilty of something, that I was sleeping with every doctor at the hospital, that I made him slip and bang his bad knee. That I made him beat me up, that it was me who made the fist, angled the foot, brought down a hand hard. Hard. The first time he hit me I was nineteen. I can hear his voice now, so persuasive, so low and yet somehow so strong, making me understand once again that I'm all wrong. Frannie, Frannie, Fran, he says. Tha
Excerpted from Black and Blue: A Novel by Anna Quindlen
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “Intimate and illuminating and, as is true of most anything Quindlen writes, well worth the read.”—People
“A compelling and suspenseful [novel] that goes straight to the gut.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
For eighteen years Fran Benedetto kept her secret, hid her bruises. She stayed with Bobby because she wanted her son to have a father, and because, in spite of everything, she loved him. Then one night, when she saw the look on her ten-year-old son’s face, Fran finally made a choice—and ran for both their lives.
Now she is starting over in a city far from home, far from Bobby. In this place she uses a name that isn’t hers, watches over her son, and tries to forget. For the woman who now calls herself Beth, every day is a chance to heal, to put together the pieces of her shattered self. And every day she waits for Bobby to catch up to her. Bobby always said he would never let her go, and despite the ingenuity of her escape, Fran Benedetto is certain of one thing: It is only a matter of time.