The Last Secret

by Mary McGarry Morris

“There are few contemporary authors whose work can absorb readers so fully and with such immediacy that the line between character and reader begins to seem dangerously thin. Among these few is the brilliant Mary McGarry Morris.” –Los Angeles TimesMary McGarry Morris has been hailed as “one of the most skillful writers at work in America today” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). In The Last Secret, she tells the riveting story of Nora Hammond, a woman blessed with the perfect a charming husband, two bright teenage children, a successful career in the family’s newspaper business, and an esteemed role in the charity work of her New England town. But Nora’s comfortable existence threatens to unravel when she learns of her husband’s longtime affair–and when the specter of a sordid incident from her youth returns with terrifying force. Confronted by shame and betrayal, Nora suddenly feels dangerously alone. With no one to turn to, she becomes easy prey to a ghost from her past–the cunning, relentless Eddie Hawkins.A tautly told tale of psychological tension and chilling moral complexity, The Last Secret accelerates to a shattering conclusion as it explores the irreparable consequences of one family’s crimes of the heart. The Last Secret burnishes Mary McGarry Morris’s reputation as one of our most pro­digously gifted writers.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Audiobook, Contemporary, Thriller, Psychological Suspense, Drama

290 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 7, 2009

About the author

Mary McGarry Morris is an American novelist, short story author and playwright from New England. She uses its towns as settings for her works. In 1991, Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times described Morris as "one of the most skillful new writers at work in America today"; The Washington Post has described her as a "superb storyteller"; and The Miami Herald has called her "one of our finest American writers".
She has been most often compared to John Steinbeck and Carson McCullers. Although her writing style is different, Morris also has been compared to William Faulkner for her character-driven storytelling. She was a finalist for the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. As of 2011, Morris has published eight novels, some of which were best-sellers, and numerous short stories. She also has written a play about the insanity trial of Mary Todd Lincoln.

Reviews

[Nette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Next time I'm going to trust the Goodreads reviewers rather than the established print critics, who thought this book was rich and lyrical and wrenching (and who all must have discovered crisp hundred dollar bills tucked into their review copies). Imagine a novelization of the worst Lifetime "Woman in Peril" movie you've ever seen. Then imagine that the heroine is whiny and unlikeable and the villain is right out of a crappy L&O: SVO episode (sorry, mixing my TV metaphors), and voila: this book.

[Andrea]

It is inconceivable to me that the author of this novel also wrote the brilliant work "The Lost Mother." In this book, Morris' character development is poor and the major plot revelations near the end of the novel were blatantly obvious by the second chapter. The fact that Nora doesn't even consider divorce as a possibility after learning of her husband's lengthy affair, especially after Ken says he doesn't "do" guilt very well, is unrealistic and so is the fact that she doesn't ask Ken the questions any betrayed woman would. The motivations of the character of Eddie are also unclear...if he was so obsessed with Nora and all that happened on that night, why does he wait twenty-six years to look her up? If you want a good read, try one of Morris' other books and leave this one on the shelf.

[Lynne Adams · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm really surprised I didn't like this book because I love Mary McGarry Morris's other books. This one just fell flat in every respect. The plot was predictable and tedious, and more importantly, I disliked EVERY character, even the children. No one was particularly sympathetic or even interesting. The main character was like an infuriating friend you want to scream at because they are acting so ridiculous. Her refusal to take any action after she found out her husband's secrets was just unbearable. Couple her with a book filled with other goofballs (and one psychotic drifter), and you just get a very unsatisfying book. I was happy to finish it so I could move onto something good. . . .

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a mixed blessing to get good dust-jacket blurbs. Mary McGarry Morris's work was described as brilliant, absorbing, thrilling, deeply affecting, and astonishing---among others. And the people giving the praise are no slouches since they are writing for the NYTimes and the Washington Post (among others).
I found this piece (which I didn't finish) both predictable and unrealistic -- the story of an apparently happily married woman (Nora) whose life crumbles around her (partially because of something she did in her youth). The conceit is that Nora is a strong happy woman when we first meet her but as we get to know her better we realize she's actually a frail, guilt-ridden individual. Since we're inside Nora's head from the start, it's a bit of a sell not to know the guilt-ridden, frail bits right up front.
Do I sound like I think I've been cheated?

[Ken Oder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my third Morris book. She is among the best writers I've read. The quality of her writing, plot, suspense, and most of all, character development are superb. In all three cases I found myself completely immersed in her creation. The endings of her stories are, however, uniformly depressing. The main character you've grown to love inevitably loses, devastatingly, and the bad guys you've come to hate with a passion win out. I love your writing, Ms. Morris. You've earned this five star rating and then some, but I'm done. I'm sitting here depressed again, and I just can't go through this a fourth time. Having said that, if anyone has read a Morris book that ends on a positive note, or even a neutral one, please let me know and I'll jump on it eagerly.

[Nancy Mills · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving it 2 stars because I did finish it, but probably only because it was an audiobook I listened to while driving and it was not hard to keep up with. From the description, it didn't sound like my cup of tea, but I like other Mary McGarry Morris books so much that I checked out this one.
The upper middle class woman with the "perfect" family has a creepy secret, but it is so old and she was so young when she had the experience that it's ridiculous the lengths she went to to try to "disappear" it when it reared its ugly head years later.
Her husband is an ass and I wanted to wring her neck for not bouncing him out of the house when she learned of his infidelities. The only characters in the book I came even close to liking were the husband's brother and cousin, who were not really central characters in the book.
I'd skip this one unless you like soap operas about whiny upper crust people.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not enjoy.

[Donna Girouard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, by the time the last secret is revealed in The Last Secret, it's really no secret because any reader with half a brain and a little savvy has already figured it out. But that's not the biggest problem (for me) with this novel.
The main reason I rated this book the way I have is because of the ending. Too many people survived (and some even to live happily ever after). Honestly, I wanted this novel to end like a Shakespearean tragedy: with nearly everyone dead (at least all the main characters). I wanted Eddie to go on a mad rampage and kill EVERYONE (especially Ken) and then himself because I dislike EVERY MAIN CHARACTER IN THIS STORY. I rooted for NO ONE.
The story itself really isn't a bad one (and the writing is decent), but I stopped caring about the characters about halfway through the book. No one really has enough redeeming qualities to keep the reader on his / her side.
Too bad.

[SIMH]

I did not finish this book. I did not finish this book because the protagonist is so boring. She dose nothing to drive the plot along, the plot just happens to her. She never stands up for her self and has no common sense. She tries to make a marriage work after her husband cheated on her for years, thinks divorce will hurt her kids, won't go to therapy, won't leave her husband, and dose not call the police when someone refuses to leave her house. Also she seems like a terrible parent. She is upset with her daughter for watching cartoons. She isn't that bad though and that's why it's so annoying that she is always guilty and blames her self. She is upset for accidentally upsetting her husband by reminding him that HE cheated on her because apparently she still wants to make the relationship work. She also feels guilty about yelling at the woman who he cheated on her with (who pretended to be her friend for years) because her child cried. This main character is ..... I don't even know.

[Ruth · Rating 1 out of 5]

What can I say? My library seems to love MMG, and their list of MP3 downloads is light on stuff I want to read. This is a loser. Talk about the Perils of Pauline. Poor Nora, in the space of about a year, has almost every misfortune one can imagine dumped into her unable-to-cope lap. Describing all this is some of the most purple over-the-top prose I've read in a long time. Only reason I slogged on to the end was to see how in the hell MMG was going to resolve this melodramatic stew. Not well, it turns out.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really connect with this book. The main character is, by her own description, cold and bossy, and you never really get to see a soft side that makes you care about her. The premise was interesting - the man from her past arriving when her life is falling apart - but then the story takes an odd turn and the protagonist becomes even less likeable. All the characters left me cold, actually, and the story was pretty depressing.

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hooked in immediately to this book, which kept me on the edge of my seat. The characters were unlikeable--mostly rich and abrasive. The Last Secret has a trashy veneer to it, with the con man hovering on the edges, waiting to strike, and no one being honest with anyone...still I kept reading.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Competent but not riveting account of a woman's life falling apart...husband in an affair, kids running wild and a charismatic loser from her past back in town and looking for money. Just okay from a writing standpoint and pretty depressing on top of that.

[Bridget · Rating 2 out of 5]

Second one this week that I have no desire to finish. It's not badly written, I just don't want to deal with another manipulating man/threatened woman plot right now.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I see a lot of people did not like this book and for legitimate reasons. I admit there are weaknesses, but the main message I took from it is that a traumatic event in Nora's past has destroyed her self confidence. She doesn't remember clearly what happened yet she is filled with guilt and never feels like she is a good person. She feels that she is just pretending to be good and that her life is a sham.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested the whole time but it was also an extremely annoying plot.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some books and authors that I'd like to have with me on a desert island. Mary McGarry Morris is one of those writers. I have always been drawn to her books, their dark and brooding nature with the sentience of doom and fatality omnipresent. I can almost smell the darkness when I read her novels, feel the desperation of the dissolute and the outsider. I have read all but two of her books and those two I'm saving for a very special time and place - - a desert island kind of moment. She's THAT good a writer.

The Last Secret is powerful and unflinching. It builds up slowly but the tension and angst keep coming. The characters are disgruntled, desperate, despairing, fragile, with huge currents roiling through their being as they try to keep their inner and outer storms at bay. Some characters are loathsome, despicable and pathetic. These are juxtaposed with others who try to stay strong, keep one foot in front of the other, and maintain independence at all costs. What Ms. Morris is so excellent at portraying is that while people try to fool themselves into believing that they have certain attributes better, worse, or more unique than others, most people are actually quite alike in that they harbor these components: the good, the bad and the evil.

When she was seventeen years old, Nora ran off with a troubled young man named Eddie Hawkins. During the week she was with him she drank a lot, got into situations that were outside her comfort range and behaved in ways that she thought were completely outside her moral compass. At one point Eddie asks her to come on to an older man and encourage him to follow her outside a bar so that Eddie can rob him. The older man follows her and something dreadful happens. Nora is never sure of the exact details but she has a recurrent nightmare that the man has his face bashed in by a tire iron and that she is the one who commits the crime. What she also remembers, is that after the 'incident' she is covered with blood and that she hitches a ride with a semi driver who manages to get her away from the scene of the crime and encourages her to call her mother. She calls her mother and returns home, bringing with her a lifetime of guilt and nightmares.

Skip forward twenty-five years. Nora is now happily married (so the thinks) to a man named Ken and she has two teen-aged children, Drew and Chloe. She has married into old money and works on the family-owned newspaper in New England. From the outside, everyone is happy and the family looks perfect but, as Nora believes, "Happiness so often trails a long shadow". She soon finds out that Ken has been having a 'relationship' for the past four years with one of her best friends. Nora's world is shattered. Her family is torn apart and in the process other, and often darker, secrets come to light. "Behind every truth lurks a darker truth. Behind the simplest reality, betrayal."

Nora is philanthropic and she is deeply involved with the volunteer board for Sojourn House, a home for battered women. Sojourn House has received national attention and Nora is being photographed by Newsweek magazine for her work there. Eddie Hawkins, sociopathic and narcissistic, sees Nora's picture in the magazine and recognizes her from their week together twenty-five years earlier. He travels across the country to Nora's hometown and sets himself up there in a cheap hotel. He contacts Nora who does not know what he wants but she has a stomach-turning, gut-wrenching uneasiness about seeing him. Her gut reaction is that he has sought her out to blackmail her for the role she had in what she thinks may have been a murder twenty-five years previously. She is a victim of perceived blackmail. Eddie Hawkins arrives just as her marriage and life are falling apart. Though fragile, angry and unsure on the inside, Nora comes across as independent, strong and almost cold on the outside. This is a common theme in Ms. Morris's books - - the outside harbors the seeds of the inside, and vice verse.

As Nora is dealing with one family secret and betrayal after another, the book proceeds to get darker and darker, with a deeply ingenious plot and wonderfully deep and crisp characterizations. I felt like I could reach out and touch the characters, they came so alive. Characterization is one of Ms. Morris's greatest gifts (and she has many). She examines the inner and outer worlds of her protagonists and leaves no stone left unturned. That, along with a breath holding plot, make this one of the best books I've read this year. I finished the book in two days, hardly coming up for air. My only disappointment was that I didn't want it to end. I wanted to continue to be a fly on the wall watching, and watching, and watching some more.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think we all have days when we wake up hating the world and wanting everyone in it to be as miserable as we are. For me these days usually coincide with the first two of my period. This book is perfect for those times. Also for right after (or before) a break-up or when you specifically dislike someone and want them to suffer in fiction. Gorge yourself on schadenfreude! Warning: I don't recommend reading the entire book at once or undiluted by other books, as you may end up feeling disgusted with yourself.

So, the plot is pretty cliche: woman married into a wealthy New England family, thinks she has everything, finds out husband is cheating, world falls apart, blah, blah. There's also the "secret from her past" - passages from the point of view of her crazed blackmailer, which I found unreal and boring. The thing that I love about this story is that the protagonist is so unfailingly stupid and whiny that you want bad things to happen to her, which the book certainly delivers. There's a long wind-up to the point where she finds out about the affair, and since the reader already knows what he's going to tell her, this just makes you impatient for the bomb to drop. I was listening to the audiobook, and found Nora (not the reader, just the character) so irritating, that when it finally hit her, I was celebrating in a very undignified, unfeminist, "take that bitch!" kind of way. It just goes on like that. She does annoying, stupid things which make you groan with frustration, then celebrate once the excrement hits the ventilator. Anyway, not a book for people who are perky, chipper and 100% mentally well-adjusted. Great book for the cynics, and for the times when you meet someone stupid, smug, and successful, and wish for a little come-uppance.

Also, the eponymous "Last Secret"? Obvious from the beginning. How long the affair was going on is a huge hint.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nora Trimble Hammond was living the perfect life. When a relationship between her husband and her best friend comes out into the open that illusion of perfection becomes the nightmare of trying to hold together a family that is slowly disintegrating. As if that isn't enough, a spectre from her past shows up at the same time reminding Nora of a week long interlude from her teens that she would just as soon not recall. Overall the story was a good one but I found the “voice” of the book annoyingly whiny, which distracted me from the story.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

If there was ever a book that sat a bounded woman in the middle of a guilty and sinful mob, passed out stones for the mob to throw and provided a never ending refill of stones to continue throwing, this is that book.

Then after the stoning she lives broken and fractured in a life of purgatory while the mob points fingers, talks crap about her and shamelessly shun her. All the while the mob goes on living amongst flowers and rainbows.

And a woman wrote this book SMH.

Not a fan of this one at ALL!

[Sa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed with The Last Secret. Being a fan of Mary MaGarry Morris, I expected more. The story and details seemed contrived. If you want to read a good Mary MaGarry Morris book I recommend Songs of Ordinary Times.

[Cathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't put this down. The rich writing and Nora's view of the world captured me when the book opened on her 17-year-old self and never let go. If you like psychological suspense, I highly recommend it.

[Martha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Automatic two stars since I read the whole book. This was a well-written and disturbing read. I don’t have a strong stomach for all of the twists and family-eroding turns that took over this story. I kept hoping that the story would brighten, but it dragged everyone down and almost out.

[Elemgee · Rating 2 out of 5]

The guilt of youthful folly catches up to our heroine erven as her husband is double timing.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it was just the style of writing for me or something. I kept thinking I missed pages because it was jumping between scenes and topics.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed emotions about The Last Secret, I did enjoy it. I wanted to slap Nora the main character and tell her to wake up, (thus the author did a great job of evoking emotion from me) at the same time people do behave or think or lack of thinking in similar ways as Nora. Even after her husbands affair she could not find a way of opening up to herself or others ( the shame of any secret is not telling) this only fueled her illusion of the state of her marriage and the illusion that she was putting her children first. The author built the character of Eddie (the villian) in such a way that I looked forward to his twisted monologe and could feel just how creepy he really was. I am a big fan of Mary McGarry Morris and would highly recommend any of her books, they touch on topics that evoke emotion good or bad, and there are no fairy tale endings.......

[Tiffany Crumpton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I blindly picked this book and listened to it via audiobook. I immediately felt sorry for Nora as she told about her young past and then finding out about her jerk husband's affair for years to one of her closest friends. What I didn't like was how weak she was portrayed. I never felt like she stood up for herself or for her kids, despite all that the people around her were doing to her and saying about her. I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that this women didn't have the slightest clue about what was going on with her husband and all the other women. Throwing Eddie in was a whole story in itself. I just felt like there was a lot going on between the characters and hard to tell what the overall message was supposed to be from the author.

[Nancy LiPetri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a masterful telling of psychological drama that gets you flying through the final chapters to see if you guessed who is truly craziest and if you're right about a number of secrets. Like the currently popular "Big Little Lies," it's a complex unraveling of moral dilemmas. There are the seemingly perfect, privileged lives and the scandalous past and present betrayals. Guilt, shame and mental instability snake all through the story. I'll read more by this Nat'l Book Award author who has written Oprah Book Club selections.

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly well written suspense novel. However, the main character’s conscious ignorance of the situation (even her children know) does make Nora seem unbearable in her continued denial of the obvious affair her husband is having with her best friend/his high school girlfriend. Talk about an ostrich, Nora’s continued devotion to her husband strains belief. However, MMM cleverly inserts a shelter for abused women into the story (Nora volunteers there) to better help the reader understand why women stay in intolerable relationships.

[RainLady777 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't get the low reviews for this book. Just because the characters didn't act as expected. That's what makes a book interesting...trying to understand why the characters do what they do. Ok, I get the part about being a bit blasé about your husband having an affair but sometimes you have to read between the lines...there's a reason for something. I think this book went over some peoples' heads. I thought it was a brilliant mystery. Not a cookie cutter book with every character doing what everyone would expect him/her to do.