Black and Blue, by Anna Quindlen

I read One True Thing a number of years ago and just came across this book which somehow found its way into my library. The theme is domestic violence. Oprah selected it as a book of the month or something in 1999. Fran, after years of abuse, takes her 10-year old son, and flees to Florida where she has a new name, new job and a new life. The plot is not complicated: She cannot let her husband, a cop, know where she is. She finds a new friend and there’s a love interest. But of course Fran (now Beth) does stupid things, like calling her sister and getting herself in the newspapers and on TV when she came to the aid of an accident victim (she’s a nurse).

None of this is imaginative, and rather predictable. Spoiler alert: The ending, indeed the book itself, is not taut with fright as say, the narrative in Sleeping with the Enemy. In fact, it’s relatively tame. Her abuser is not brought to justice and gets the kid. So the book is depressing, joyless — which may be the point. Quindlen inflicts on the reader the abuse she describes: We may not be black, but at the end, we’re definitely blue.

3 stars. Find this review and more of my reviews on Goodreads.