“I even started using a soft toothbrush so I wouldn’t have to taste blood in my mouth more often than I already did. How do you tell that to a kid who loves his dad?”
For eighteen years of marriage, Fran Benedetto kept her secret. For eighteen years of pain having bruises bearing different hues, forcing herself to stay alive despite of the punches and misery, she stayed with her husband Bobby because she wanted her son to have a father. Then, one night she realized that it will be the last time Bobby will put those filthy hands in her body; that night will be the last time of having broken nose and ribs and black eyes.
With her son Robert, they went to Florida carrying a different name, different family and proclaiming a new life. With the help of Patty Bancroft, an agent helping battered women, she is slowly picking up the pieces of her shattered life and wounded heart. Fran used the name Beth Crenshaw, lived in a small house and embraced the sweetness of freedom given to her. Though, living away from Bobby, she can still feel the weight f his stare, the gruesome effect of his dark voice, the painful hits and punches that eventually made her soul and body numb. Upon going to sleep, she can’t control the flash of memories, happy ones but mostly the painful memories with her husband.
She met Erik Riordon, Robert’s PE teacher (as always) . She fell in love, though not really attracted at first. Upon waking up each morning, she is loving every tiny piece of her newly-created world; a world with love, her son, Erik, friends and freedom. But all stories don’t really have happy endings, Bobby went to her house one day and began devastating her life again. He took Robert with him and flew to a certain place no one else know. Day by day, she is imagining Robert will appear in tat decrepit door and will be happy with her; but life is cruel, she isn’t able to see him again. Even though elated with her new husband Erik, her daughter Grace Ann (named after her favorite and only sister), a missing piece is yet to be found. After three years of waiting patiently, Bobby has stopped ruining her life and Bobby took her beloved son away from her…
The story is okay, not so good and not so bad. There isn’t anything remarkable in it. The story is dark and heartbreaking. A woman being abused and raped by her own husband who should be dong the opposite thing- loving her. Anna Quindlen, however did a magnificent job of relating such a story to her reader. You can feel the pain, the weight of emotions, her words seem perfectly laid that I can really feel the agony of Beth/Fran. You can feel the eerie ambiance, can smell the fear shown in the pallid visage of Fran, can fully imagine the way Bobby is treating his wife.
Another thing that I observed with Quindlen is that she hates period, sometimes I kept reading the same sentence over and over again that I have to repeat reading it just to get the point of it. Her descriptions are vivid but sometimes Quindlen, try not to elaborate the same ideas infinitely. The plot is somewhat touching yet, there are parts that I am really bored, that if I would cut that scene out, there would be no effect. I hate the ending, because I am prejudiced. (haha. I am not really a fan of sad endings.) Though realistic, I think it is so unfair for Beth to lose her son. The story shows that a woman can fight but will not really win in the end…which is a bad and depressing thing…for me.
batangenyaako
