The Robber Bride

by Margaret Atwood

Set in present-day Toronto, Ontario, the novel is about three women and their history with old friend and nemesis, Zenia. Roz, Charis, and Tony meet once a month in a restaurant to share a meal decades after Zenia betrayed them and interferes with their romantic relationships. During one outing they spot Zenia, who they thought to be long-dead since their university days. The plot then travels back in time to explain how Zenia stole, one by one, their respective partners. The novel alternates between the present and the past through flashbacks, in the third person perspective of Tony, Charis and Roz. Zenia gives each woman a different version of her biography, tailor-made to insinuate herself into their lives. No one version of Zenia is the truth, and the reader knows no more than the characters.

Their betrayals by Zenia are what initially bring the three together as friends and bind their lives together irrevocably - their monthly luncheons begin after her funeral. In the present-day, Roz, Charis and Tony each individually confront Zenia in a Toronto hotel room, where she tells each of them that the men they'd been with got what they deserved. She explains various versions of her earlier staged death, each as implausible as the accounts of her life.