90th out of 394 books
—
109 voters
Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln
Mary Todd Lincoln is one of history’s most misunderstood and enigmatic women. The first president’s wife to be called First Lady, she was a political strategist, a supporter of emancipation, and a mother who survived the loss of three children and the assassination of her beloved husband. Yet she also ran her family into debt, held seances in the White House, and was commi...more
Paperback, 621 pages
Published
October 1st 2007
by Mariner Books
(first published January 1st 2006)
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Yeah, I enjoyed this book, but when I think back on it not a lot sticks with me. I found it an interesting tale of a first lady we've heard of so much due to being wife to one of the most influential and great president's the U.S. has seen today, but yet we don't know much about. There are many things that made this book a unique and fun read.
One thing was that we got a new view on the Civil War. Many books are written about either soldiers or slaves, occasionally family members of those fightin...more
One thing was that we got a new view on the Civil War. Many books are written about either soldiers or slaves, occasionally family members of those fightin...more
This was an odd one for me. Although I plowed through 700+ pages in two weeks, as I was finishing it up this morning it dawned on me, I don't really like Mary! The story is the tale of Mary Todd Lincoln as she was committed in an insane asylum by her son, Robert Todd. Then there were stories looking back at her life. A sad, sad life she led: the loss of her husband and three sons; her only living son was absolutely horrible to her; she was a shopoholic and got herself in terrible debt, more than...more
I can't decide how I feel about this book... It was definitely interesting, and I could NOT put it down. The life of Mary Todd Lincoln is fascinating-- she endured more in her lifetime than any person should have to. She lost 3 of her 4 sons as well as her husband to an assassin-- an event she witnessed. She was completely abused by the newspaper and other media of the time throughout her husband's presidency and for many, many years after, until her death. She was also committed against her wil...more
I admit to knowing very little about the Lincolns. I know what was taught in history, but very little of that centered around Mary Todd Lincoln. Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln is her fictional story, told through Mary’s own eyes and centers prominently around her admittance into an insane asylum.
I have to say, out of all the historical fiction books I’ve read this year, this one was the most depressing. I found myself torn between admiration for Mrs. Lincoln and horror at the very actions which caused he...more
I have to say, out of all the historical fiction books I’ve read this year, this one was the most depressing. I found myself torn between admiration for Mrs. Lincoln and horror at the very actions which caused he...more
Mary Todd Lincoln was the third eldest of six children of her parents. Her mother died on puerperal fever at the birth of her last child when Mary was six. Mary showed disturbing signs of extreme grief at the loss of her mother, something the stoic Victorians regarded as weak and unnecessary behaviour, exacerbated when her father married again within a year of Eliza Parker Todd’s death.
The story opens with Mary’s admittance to the sanatorium, a portrait of a perfectly sane woman discussing with...more
The story opens with Mary’s admittance to the sanatorium, a portrait of a perfectly sane woman discussing with...more
Read about 1/3 of this today just so I could get on to greener passages, BUT this book was not all bad. It is about Mary Lincoln, wife of Honest Abe, both about her eldest son committing her to an assylum as a lunatic and her looking back over her life. Mary turns out to be quite colorful, but as the book is historical fiction, you don't know what exactly is true and what is not.
From what I have read online and heard from book club members also reading the book, Mary is the most vilified First...more
From what I have read online and heard from book club members also reading the book, Mary is the most vilified First...more
Wow. I have so much to say about this book. It was wonderful, engrossing, and hard to put down. It starts with Mary as a child who loses her mother and it is obvious from the get go that Mary has a problem with death, like many other people then and now. She tends to replace death with inanimate objects that give her comfort. She is a passionate woman. When she meets Mr. Lincoln (Indeed my only complaint is he is called Mr. Lincoln throughout the entire book..Never once did she refer to him or c...more
Mar 30, 2009
Angie
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
historical-fiction,
memoir
Mary is a fictionalized memoir written from the perspective of Mary Todd Lincoln while she was committed at the Bellevue Place Sanitarium by her son, Robert Todd. While Mary is in the asylum she looks back on her life and tells her story from her past days of meeting Abraham Lincoln and raising a family, Lincoln's presidency, and his subsequent assassination, to the present day in the asylum and having to live with the truly insane. The book is well written and the author does an excellent job o...more
What's with me and historical fiction, lately, anyhow? I believe it's fair to blame my baby-in-law, to whom I am bringing this book next week.
A few months in Washington & Mary discovers accounts at shops. She's spending like a drunken sailor and hiding the bills from Abe. Robert, their eldest, is a little monster, from what I can see, the sort of child for whom you'd call in one of those television nannies (and it doesn't get better as he gets older, either). They're all living in a dreadfu...more
A few months in Washington & Mary discovers accounts at shops. She's spending like a drunken sailor and hiding the bills from Abe. Robert, their eldest, is a little monster, from what I can see, the sort of child for whom you'd call in one of those television nannies (and it doesn't get better as he gets older, either). They're all living in a dreadfu...more
Finished reading this last night. This book just made me feel so angry and so relieved to be a woman living in the current century and in a society that would find what happened to these women outrageous.
Maybe some details are historically incorrect (someone pencilled one such error in to the copy that I was reading - yes, David, I see your point about it being a 'novel') but the suppression of the women characters must surely be based on historical documentation. I just wonder where the informa...more
Maybe some details are historically incorrect (someone pencilled one such error in to the copy that I was reading - yes, David, I see your point about it being a 'novel') but the suppression of the women characters must surely be based on historical documentation. I just wonder where the informa...more
I guess I was a bit naive going into this book. I figured it would read like a biography or something similar, but it didn't take long to realize this was more like a Harlequin romance! In all my studies of President Lincoln I had considered him to be many wonderful, noble things, but a passionate,sexual man was not one that ever entered my mind. Of course, he was a man. So, okay, I guess it was there. I don't know- I'm having a hard time coming to terms with that aspect of him! Author Janie New...more
With all the attention given to Lincoln right now, this was a great read to already have under my belt. A fictionalized memoir, this is written from the perspective of Mary Todd Lincoln, from the insane asylum where her eldest son has "stashed" her several after her husband, President Lincoln, was assassinated. Sounds like an authentic voice, but I could never quite decide (I don't think the author could either) whether she was really insane or just "quirky" -- she did enough laudanum, coca, and...more
This book was devastating. I know that it's fictional, but many facts of her life support the author's characterization. I really want to talk to somebody about this book. The fact that she was given laudanum and chloral hydrate - and told to drink as much as she wanted to "help her sleep" - because of "feminine" problems - clearly originated by the loss of 3 sons and the assassination of her husband as she sat by him - it just makes me sick. To think that women were so carelessly treated this w...more
The story was written as if Mary was writing her memoirs. It told about her young life in a well to-do family, falling in love with a penniless attorney. Her marriage, birth of her sons and their deaths, being First Lady, the war, the assignation of President Lincoln, and finally the betrayal of her only surviving son, who had her committed to a insane asylum. Looking at her life as a outsider, I could see perfectly clear, why she was the way she was. The struggles she had being a lady people ex...more
Even though I gave myself permission ages ago to not finish books if I'm not enjoying them, it still causes me some anxiety! I made it 1/3 of the way through this gigantic book and definitely invested some precious "book time" into it, but I'm done with it. I understand this is a work of historical non-fiction and not a biography, but I think when writing about someone who is so famous and well-documented, it almost feels invasive and intrusive to write what she did sometimes. As I read, I kept...more
Long, but compelling read. Using secondary resources for facts, Newman tells the (fictional) story of Mary Todd Lincoln from her point of view, using an imagined diary kept by the widow of Abraham Lincoln, written while she was in an Illinois mental institution, committed there by the courts through the influence of her only remaining child, Robert. The downsides of the book for me: I was never sure what was accurat and I didn't much care for the fictional details of her sexual desires and exper...more
I have fond memories, as a child, of our primary school teacher reading aloud to us from a biographical novel about Abraham Lincoln but his wife, Mary, has remained a mystery for me until now. What a fascinating woman! Newman portrays her as a strong, independent thinking woman who loves her husband deeply yet feels frustrated at the limitations placed upon women by society.
Marrying Abraham Lincoln against the wishes of her family, Mary is much more than a pretty face, she sees past the shabby c...more
Marrying Abraham Lincoln against the wishes of her family, Mary is much more than a pretty face, she sees past the shabby c...more
Mary Todd Lincoln is a fascinating character because she was a combination of such strong and conflicting traits. On the one hand she was highly intelligent and instrumental in her husband's career and the continuation of the United States of America as such. On the other hand, she had such irrational greed for fine material goods that she gave no thought to how these goods would be paid for or who would suffer as a when they were not. In an attempt to cover her deeds, she threatened national se...more
I'll be honest, It took a good few chapters for me to get into the feel of the book. But towards the middle it became one more chapter as I sleepily laid up in bed with my little book light. At the end I really cared about what happend to Mrs. Lincoln, I felt for her. She is so often dismissed as a crazy spiritualist, and that is indeed one aspect of Mrs. Lincoln, but Janis Cooke Newman really has a knack for giving her characters layers.
Now for the off putting portion of our review. I love a g...more
Now for the off putting portion of our review. I love a g...more
Oh how I love a book that makes me want to learn more about the subject!!! Mary, Mrs. A Lincoln is that book! Now, keep in mind, this book is a fictionalized account of the First Lady, Mary Lincoln, but, keeping that in mind, this book was wonderful! I have read several factial book about Abraham Lincoln and his life, but I had never read any about Mary. Well, after reading this historial fiction book about her, I want to rush off to the library and find some nonfiction books about Mary and her...more
This is a long, richly imagined novel narrated by Mary Lincoln from the insane asylum in Bellevue, Illinois, to which her son Robert commits her. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though, despite a positive blurb from Mary Lincoln biographer and respected historian Jean Baker, I wouldn't trust it very far to convey an accurate portrait of Mrs. Lincoln's life & times. For instance, each long chapter begins with a quote (presumably real) from the asylum's record regarding Mary Lincoln; then the first s...more
I'm a Lincoln buff. Mary Todd Lincoln fanscinates me.
She was a Southern lady determined to be first lady. Death is the constant throughout her life. Each time she is profoundly affected by it. She lost three sons...each time withdrawing more into herself.
Her family is fighting against the Union. She loses a brother.
After Lincoln dies, She withdraws even more and her son is concerned.
He goes to court and has her committed. The book is an account of that time. She is to say the least eccentric....more
She was a Southern lady determined to be first lady. Death is the constant throughout her life. Each time she is profoundly affected by it. She lost three sons...each time withdrawing more into herself.
Her family is fighting against the Union. She loses a brother.
After Lincoln dies, She withdraws even more and her son is concerned.
He goes to court and has her committed. The book is an account of that time. She is to say the least eccentric....more
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I waver back and forth as to whether Mary Todd Lincoln was just a woman ahead of her time, passionate about her husband and her family, interested in politics and ambitious or self-centered, frivolous, and mentally ill. I think all those things add up to become Mary Todd Lincoln, a very complex individual. Janis Cooke Newman does an amazing job of looking at one of the most misunderstood women in our country's history. She starts in Mary's early life and the loss of her mother, her courtship and...more
Is there a woman more easily dismissed than Mary Todd Lincoln? (I'm ignoring modern celebrities like Lindsey Lohan or Paris Hilton, or all of those young women who look alike.) Mrs. Lincoln came from a 'good' family, but married down to a social inferior, a very tall, ungraceful, unhandsome man who remained faithful to her throughout his life. It is still a mystery to me why they chose each other, and I have a fat shelf of Lincoln books.
Anyway, Newman puts herself in Mary's shoes, and imagines...more
Anyway, Newman puts herself in Mary's shoes, and imagines...more
Someone passed this historical novel onto me some months ago and I put it aside thinking I wasn't sure I was that interested in it. What a mistake!
Once I picked this book up and started reading it, it was difficult to put down.
Not only was the material interesting, but I really enjoyed Newman's writing style. While a lot of license was probably taken with the facts because no one actually knows what Mary Lincoln was thinking during her fascinating life, having her as the narrator of the tale wa...more
Once I picked this book up and started reading it, it was difficult to put down.
Not only was the material interesting, but I really enjoyed Newman's writing style. While a lot of license was probably taken with the facts because no one actually knows what Mary Lincoln was thinking during her fascinating life, having her as the narrator of the tale wa...more
I found this book completely fascinating from the first page. I love history and loved the insights this book gave into the Lincoln's lives, particularly Mary Lincoln. I was appalled at how the wife of our greatest president was treated after his death and how very quickly - and unfeelingly - she was allowed to fall into poverty. I detested how her unloving and heartless son was able to manipulate and control all her doings and finances and completely strip away any control she may have had over...more
Even though this is a 600 page book and it was chosen as our monthly book club selection, I am thrilled to have read it and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed reading it. I thought the story was very well-written and I was sorry to see it end - I miss Mary and her preposterous antics! Her son, who had her committed, might be the most evil character I have ever read - it boils my blood to find out how horribly he treated his parents, especially his mother. Many of Mary's actions were...more
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Janis Cooke Newman is the author of
Mary
, a historical novel about Mary Todd Lincoln. Mary was chosen by USA Today as the best historical fiction of 2006 and was a finalist for the LA Times First Fiction award. She is also the author of The Russian Word for Snow, a memoir about adopting her son from a Moscow orphanage. Both books are available in paperback.
Author photo copyright Chris Hardy.
More about Janis Cooke Newman...
Author photo copyright Chris Hardy.
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