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Feb 18, 2011

Myfanwy rated it:

Bad Marie is a bad influence. I say this because while reading Marcy Dermansky's second novel, Bad Marie, I was driven to do something that I, as a mother of a small, active child, never do anymore--and that is stay up past 11PM reading, which should tell you something about how engrossing this novel is if even an exhausted mother will stay up late reading it.

It is that good.

So what about Marie? Who is she? She's a nanny. She's an ex-con. She's a fuck up. She's also got a More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2011

Ethel rated it:

This deceptively simple book was a gripping read and I felt my chest clutch throughout, and whole body sigh at the novel's end. Told in clear, concise prose, Dermansky's characterization of the novel's protagonist, Marie, is masterful. Though a deeply flawed character, I cared a great deal about Marie and found myself hoping for her all the way, even while knowing her situation was impossible.

That sense of the inevitable and the impossible at the end of the novel will stay with me fo More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 01, 2011

Linda rated it:

I loved this book about a young woman who lives on the edge of life. It was a quick read and one I will reread. It reminded me of going to a movie in the afternoon, being totally immersed in the experience and feeling startled when it was over and I exited into the bright daylight. I will read her other novel. Hope it is in Sony.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2011

Karol rated it:

A hard-drinking ex-convict fresh out of prison, Marie takes a job as a nanny and soon runs off to Paris with the little girl and the French husband, who turns out to be the author of her favorite book--a novel about a lonely girl in love with a sea lion--that she discovered in prison. Marie is selfish, rebellious, and proudly immature--she wears purple Converse high tops as proof--but she is also profoundly romantic and naive, making one bad decision after another, so that you sympathize with he More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 04, 2010

Adele rated it:

pure pleasure even if you're reading with one eye closed and cringing from what she might do next.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 21, 2011

Lynn rated it:

I am not entirely sure how I feel about this book. Marie is a desperate, delusional thirty year old woman who developmentally seems frozen in a decade past. As a young, reckless, 20-something, she naively makes some bad choices that lead her to prison - which provides for perhaps the first time in her life a predictability and structure that comforts her. But it's also a place where all her decisions are made for her and she can remain helpless and childlike. When she is released, she immedia More...

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Apr 03, 2011

Katie rated it:

I don’t really know what I thought about this book. I read it pretty quickly, finishing almost all of it in two days, but it was a short, straightforward read.

Marie is a 30-year-old woman fresh out of a six-year prison sentence, who is employed by her childhood friend, Ellen, to be a nanny for her toddler-age daughter, Caitlin, who becomes Marie’s favorite person in the world. One night Ellen and her French husband, Benôit Doniel, catch Marie passed out drunk in the bathtub with Caitli More...

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Mar 05, 2011

Elaine rated it:

The best thing about this book is Caitlin, the 2 1/2 year old around whom much of the plot centers. I like the way Dermansky faithfully and realistically depicts her speech, her whims, her tantrums and her inherent compelling loveablenes without pretending to show us what goes on inside her head. It's a neat trick, having a character who dominates the narrative to such an extent, but who is essentially a heartbreakingly lovable, maddening, exhausting enigma (as any toddler is). Marie, the ost More...

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Jan 22, 2011

Nina rated it:

Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky is clever and funny, a riotous ride through the mind of a deranged but strangely appealing anti-heroine, and a jumbled journey from New York to Paris and beyond. I'm not going to give away anything more of the completely original and wacky plot but suffice it to say that Marie is indeed very, very bad.

Despite her badness (she does something no mother could ever forgive), I found myself rooting for Marie. She is perennially unlucky, seemingly fated to ma More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 17, 2010

Geoffrey rated it:

Marie is not really bad, she is just ambitionless and self-indulgent and steals things, including her patroness's clothes, baby and husband, just because she likes them. The husband turns out to be a hopeless, helpless fraud (known for a book which, he confesses, he didn't write) who takes her to Paris on his wife's credit card (he is also moneyless), where he abandons Marie and the baby. Marie has already spent 6 of her 30 years in jail, as an accomplice after running off to Mexico with her Mex More...

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Nov 13, 2010

Caitlin rated it:

I found this book through a discussion of unlikeable characters at The Millions, which is one of those random literary happenstance events that have been occurring quite a bit for me these days. Anyway, the point of the discussion was that oftentimes many readers will gauge their appreciation of a book on how much they liked the main character (or even worse, how much they could relate to the main character). The author held up Bad Marie as an example of a book with a rotten main character tha More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 06, 2010

christa rated it:

I don't know Marcy Dermansky, but I have to imagine the novelist behind the ridiculously delicious joy-ride Bad Marie spent a lot of time bent over a keyboard cackling as she pulled the wings off her title character.

Fiction just got fun again, friends. This is the kind of book you sprint through, only to realize everyone else is doing it wrong. Writers are taking themselves -- not to mention their characters -- far too seriously.

Lets start where Dermansky starts: With a glass More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 26, 2010

Ashley rated it:

Bad Marie could have been a cliche. The hot nanny; the bored, weak husband; the seemingly cold, ambitious wife. But Dermansky avoids death by predictability.

I read Bad Marie in one day. I can't precisely define what it is that made the story so compelling, but I was completely sucked into the book. I also can't say I particularly cared for Marie, the ex-con landing on her childhood friend's doorstep begging for a job. Friend Ellen takes in Marie, tasks her with caring for young More...

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Sep 14, 2010

Kristen rated it:

I picked up this book during a completely self-indulgent weekend; shopping, eating, and drinking by myself in Portsmouth then dealing with the aftermath on the couch the next day not touching the piles of laundry or dealing with the plumbing situation in the bathroom. Call me the ostrich. Little did I know when I grabbed the small book at River Run bookstore in Portsmouth just how perfect Bad Marie would be for my selfish weekend. When I started reading the book in the bookstore, I knew that More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 31, 2010

Malcolm rated it:

I loved this book. Marcy Dermansky is a gifted writer with an original approach to describing moral uncertainty, not unlike Jean-Philippe Toussaint's The Bathroom.
Review from The Current Reader

Marcy Dermansky’s second novel, Bad Marie, is an intimate portrait of a beautiful, but alienated young woman whose life is unmoored from expectation or convention. Upon release from a six-year stint in prison for a crime her boyfriend committed, Marie ends up at age thirty working as a More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 15, 2010

Diane rated it:

Some books grab you right away and others slowly seduce the reader. Marcy Dermansky's novel, Bad Marie, gets you from the first sentence, "Sometimes, Marie got a little drunk at work".

Marie is a nanny to her childhood friend Ellen's two-year-old daughter Caitlin. Ellen is a high-powered, hard-charging career woman, and Marie had recently been released after six years in prison for aiding her boyfriend who robbed a bank.

Marie loves Caitlin, but when she falls asl More...

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Jul 09, 2010

Jennifer rated it:

The Good Stuff

Author has a gift for the written word, she's definitely extremely talented
fascinating character study
Very unusual and a little dark
The main character is not a very nice character but you still sort of wish the best for her
darkly funny at times

The Not so Good Stuff

It's not my type of read
Dislike most of the characters in the book with the exception of Marie, and quite frankly not sure why I wanted her to sucee More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jun 08, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

Marie is actually a very entertaining character. I could have stayed up all night and finished this book in one sitting if I didn't love sleep so much. Problem is, this book has no ending. And for this, I had to take away a couple of stars.

Marie makes a lot of bad decisions. But I did not see her as an evil character. She is incredibly careless, lazy, and has almost no ability to predict the outcome of her actions. She acts as a child, even though she is thirty years old. I cannot di More...

1 comment like

Mar 06, 2011

Beverly rated it:

This is a truly vile book. I can't imagine why anyone would give it a positive rating. It is a slight but ugly story about weakness and evil in which the author, through the protagonist, exploits the fear and loneliness of a kidnapped 2 year old and portrays an abandoned cat so starved and desperate that it loses its teeth trying to bite through metal to get at food. Why present child and animal suffering as central features of a novel along with an unending exposition of fraud, betrayal, theft, More...

5 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 22, 2010

Greg rated it:

For the second time in about as many weeks I've come across a book with gushing blurbs from well-respected authors that don't seem to fit the book. "...deliciously evil...worthy of Flaubert....a naughty pleasure, a philosophical romp, heady hedonism...so very very bad...." these are just a sampling of unworthy praises on the front and back cover of the book. Never mind the gushing words to be found in the three pages of blurbs inside.

'Bad' Marie is a kind of dopey, hapless More...

16 comments like (19 people liked it)

May 29, 2011

Heather rated it:

Marie is an extraordinarily miserable character who is many things all at once. A criminal, a mistress, a kidnapper and a habitual liar are among all of the roles in Marie's reprehensible repertoire. Unfortunately, Marie is overwhelmingly terrible at playing any of these roles; as a result, the entire novel feels like a train destined for a wreck.
That is not to suggest that Dermansky's novel is as "bad" as it's protagonist. Instead, Marie's atrociousness lends itself to More...

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Nov 17, 2011

Karyl rated it:

Bad Marie is bad. Very bad. As soon as she leaves prison, having served time as accessory to a robbery and murder, she looks up her high school friend Ellen and lands a job as the nanny, caring for little Caitlin. But it doesn't take long until Marie decides to sleep with Ellen's husband Benoit, a French author who had penned Marie's favorite novel, the book that sustained her throughout her prison sentence. And then, in a whirlwind, Benoit and Marie and Caitlin jet off together to France. More...

2 comments like

Aug 16, 2011

selena rated it:

i thought i’d love bad marie, turns out, i’m just like everyone in marie’s life; we like her, but we don’t love her.

marie is recently out of prison for being an accessory to her boyfriend’s bank robbery and escape. sort of. she had met him only a week or so prior, but her passion was strong enough for the word “love” to come into use. she served a few years, getting out on good behaviour (does anyone serve their full jail sentence these days?). her boyfriend of a few weeks had killed More...

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Jun 28, 2011

Emily rated it:

I put this book as a "to read" because it was on the Tournament of Book list for this year. It got defeated early on but my library only had one copy, so I have just now gotten around to reading it. This was a female fuck up novel if I ever saw one, however it's really well done. It's short--only 200 pages but it's a page turner fo sho. Marie makes bad decisions (hello Bad Marie?!. She has her whole life; sleeping with her best friends boyfriend, dating a bank robber, abetting this More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 12, 2011

Dianah rated it:

Wow - I loved this book! You know you are dealing with a great writer when you care about a character, even though you don't like them. Marie, the nanny, has more to say (both bad and good) about motherhood than most parents. Self-absorbed and narcissistic, Marie takes her young charge on a trans-continental journey without permission. Delicious in her wickedness, you will fall in love with Marie, even though you hate her!

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 09, 2010

Elvia rated it:

How could I NOT pick up this book, called BAD MARIE, a picture of a tough looking chick SMOKING a cigarette, on the cover--especially after I read the first line. This book promised a wild, fast ride, and was clearly wrapped in legitimate literature. This is a novel in the truest sense, I think. A little along the lines of Lolita, maybe.

What a well created protagonist! Marie is a woman driven by her Id. I found myself equally as repulsed as I was smitten by her. Marie speaks to More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 04, 2012

Carrie rated it:

It is true: when you pick up this novel, make sure you have some time to finish it in the same sitting. It's hard to put down. Reading this book is akin to the saying "like watching a train wreck,"--it's hard to look away. Marie is indeed bad and makes the wrong decision every time she has one to make. It's painful to watch. There is humor, though. Not one character in this story has integrity or is at all likable, with the exception of little Caitlin.[return][return]Two things More...

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Apr 29, 2010

your neighborhood librarian rated it:

DAMN. Literature with a capital L, and you know, it's idiotic of me, but I always forget that Literature with a capital L is frequently just as entertaining and readable as Literature with a capital Crap. Why do I forget that? How do I not remember that, even though I read Chelsea Cain and Christopher Moore and John Burdett, my FAVORITE books are by Cormac McCarthy and Updike and Walker Percy and Liz Jensen?

I don't know. Blame Marie. Everyone else does.

Marie is too much. More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 23, 2011

Melissa rated it:

With a title like Bad Marie, you might have guessed that this chick Marie is a bit of a hot mess.

And you would be quite correct, for in the span of 212 pages and - what, a month's time? - Marie manages to get herself into more situations of a criminal nature than one would think would be humanly possible. (Which is probably not much of a surprise, given that Marie is newly-sprung from prison after serving six years as an accomplice in a failed bank robbery.)

When we first More...

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Dec 30, 2010

Laura rated it:

This was pleasurable reading. Dermansky's writing is definitely influenced by the noirish films she loves, and her "attempt at writing a French movie" seems successful to me. And speaking of French, the bad Marie, ex-convict turned nanny, feels (nearly) like a female version of Camus' Meursault. I say "nearly" because although both characters live for sensory experiences, suffer no regret, rarely think of the feelings of others, Marie had once been in love with a man. Sh More...

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