Product Description

With daring and compassion, Anna Quindlen weaves a forceful, harrowing portrait of a woman and a marriage, capturing the profound intricacies of love and rage, passion and violence. At once heartbreaking and utterly riveting, BLACK AND BLUE is an extraordinary work of fiction and a brilliant achievement.

For eighteen years, Fran Benedetto kept her secret, hid her bruises, and 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.

With the repackaging of BLACK AND BLUE and One True Thing, Anna Quindlen takes her place alongside Dell's Alice McDermott and Rosellen Brown bringing their beloved, acclaimed contemporary classics to a whole new audience of trade paperback readers in Delta editions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5014 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-08
• Released on: 2000-02-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com Review
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.

From School Library Journal
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
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Actress Lili Taylor reads this riveting new work by New York Times columnist Quindlen, who has accepted the most difficult of challenges writing about domestic spousal abuse and crafted a warm, sympathetic, and sometimes funny novel. Fran Benedetto, the story's narrator, flees from a violent and abusive husband to start a new life under an assumed name. With her is their son, and Fran knows that her husband, a policeman, will exploit every resource at his disposal to find them and get the boy back. The characters are drawn with sympathy and understanding, and Taylor invests the protagonist with just the right mixture of pluck and vulnerability. Highly recommended for all public libraries.?John Owen, Advanced Micro Devices, Santa Clara, CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Parts excellent, others less so
As an occasional reader of Anna Quindlen's column (who often disagrees or doesn't quite like what's written), it's hard to disagree with the fact that Quindlen is an excellent writer and has an intelligent mind. This was the first novel of hers that I read, and I'll probably seek out more.

But I didn't really love the book. I liked a lot of it, that's true. But some parts bothered me quite a bit. The writing is really great - you're immersed into this world wholly and feel like characters around you are warm and alive. From son Robert to neighbor Cindy, there's this vivid and clear world. The story runs on a perfectly smooth track, alternating rather well (I felt) between past and present.

Meanwhile, I didn't really like the end. I didn't like the rather stereotypical situation with the husband and the husband's character (abusive, possessive cop... overdone perhaps?). The description of abuse was laid on rather well but felt used and kind of dry. I thought main character Fran/Beth could have been drawn better. And most of all, I felt some parts of the book were a bit far-fetched.

I really liked the book until the very ending where, though it touched my heart, I felt a bit empty. Perhaps this was the intention, but with other far-fetched moments throughout the book it added up to being simply a four-star book - well-written, much better than most, but still lacking in some places. I enjoyed reading it all the way through and comparatively, it's a high four or a four-and-a-half, but some parts were definitely weaker.

Good side-character characterization, excellent writing, extremely difficult and important topic, and very good presentation means that this book is fairly good. While it's not a classic, it's a deep and significant read that I would recommend and one that will lead me to seek out more of Quindlen's novels.

Boring, long winded and pathetically predictable
The title of my review sums it up. Quindlen went all over the map, describing people, emotions and scenarios that were empty. I skipped dozens of pages of yawn-infused diatribe to get to something...anything...that would be interesting. The ending was so predictable it was laughable and an insult to her readers. Not her best effort.

Blue on Black, a whisper on a shout
Anna Quindlen can really write well, and I enjoyed this book a lot. It's the story of one woman's daring escape after years of domestic abuse. Unfortunately, this tale has been told a couple dozen times in the last few years, but Quindlen works hard to make it feel fresh.

The characters are the best part of Quindlen's writing. Their emotions seem real, which is the hallmark of good writing. My book club agreed that this is one of the best books that we've read recently, like Rabid: A Novel by T.K. Kenyon and The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library) by Margeret Atwood.

Minna