Bad Marie: A Novel (P.S.) [Paperback]

Marcy Dermansky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 22, 2010 | Series: P.S.

Bad Marie is the story of Marie, tall, voluptuous, beautiful, thirty years old, and fresh from six years in prison for being an accessory to murder and armed robbery. The only job Marie can get on the outside is as a nanny for her childhood friend Ellen Kendall, an upwardly mobile Manhattan executive whose mother employed Marie's mother as a housekeeper. After Marie moves in with Ellen, Ellen's angelic baby Caitlin, and Ellen's husband, a very attractive French novelist named Benoit Doniel, things get complicated, and almost before she knows what she's doing, Marie has absconded to Paris with both Caitlin and Benoit Doniel. On the run and out of her depth, Marie will travel to distant shores and experience the highs and lows of foreign culture, lawless living, and motherhood as she figures out how to be an adult; how deeply she can love; and what it truly means to be "bad".

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dermansky follows her lauded debut, Twins, with a trite tail about an ex-con's unlikely re-entry to the world. After serving six years for harboring a fugitive--her bank robber boyfriend--30-year-old Marie is released and misses the decisionless ease of prison life. She finds work as a live-in nanny (nothing like a felon watching your pride and joy) for two-and-a-half-year-old Caitlin, the daughter of her childhood best friend, Ellen, with whom she has a rocky, competitive relationship. In a hard-to-believe coincidence, Ellen is married to the French author, Benoît Doniel, whose book Marie read repeatedly while in prison, and soon enough, Benoît and Marie kick off an affair and decide to run away to Paris together with Caitlin. But when Benoît's true colors are displayed before even landing in the City of Lights (thanks to another unbelievable coincidence), Marie finds herself taking on the role of a single mother in a strange land, though her travails never really impede on her relatively charmed streak. It's off-putting how heavily the plot relies on implausible twists, and Marie is too sketchily drawn to carry the full weight of the story.
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From Booklist

Dermansky follows her bold debut, Twins (2005), with a wickedly nihilistic and suspenseful tale of erotic mayhem. Impulsive, larcenous, and utterly self-absorbed, not to mention vampishly beautiful, Marie rather liked prison, where she could read her favorite book, a novel by a French author named Benoît Doniel, over and over. Her handsome young Mexican lover and inept accomplice hung himself in jail, and her mother won't even pick her up, so upon her release, Marie heads for her old friend Ellen's swanky New York apartment. Smug Ellen knows how dangerous Marie is, yet she desperately needs a nanny for her precocious toddler daughter, Caitlin. As for her husband, it's none other than Benoît Doniel. Bewitching and commanding, Dermansky creates a template for either a comedy of sexual errors or an all-out tragedy, then keeps readers guessing until the very end. Set in New York, Paris, the Riviera, and Mexico, this is an edgy, speedy, stylish, unpredictable, funny, and heart-stopping tale of a damaged soul who finally finds love in the clear-eyed intelligence, trust, and joy of a child. --Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (June 22, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061914711
• ISBN-13: 978-0061914713
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #596,526 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marcy Dermansky is the author of the BAD MARIE and TWINS.

BAD MARIE has been selected for the Barnes and Noble Fall 2010 Discover Great New Writers program. Booklist Magazine hailed the book as "a wickedly nihilistic and suspenseful tale of erotic mayhem."

TWINS was a NY Times Editors Choice Pick and a New York Public Library 2006 Selection of Books for the Teen Age.

Marcy is the recipient fellowships from the the MacDowell Colony and the Edward Albee Ranch. She is the winner of the 2002 Smallmouth Press Andre Dubus Novella Award and the 1999 Story Magazine Carson McCullers short story prize. Her stories have been published in numerous literary journals, including "McSweeneys," "The Alaska Quarterly Review," and "The Indiana Review," and included in the anthology "Love Stories: A Literary Companion to Tennis."

Marcy serves as a board member of the online literary community Fictionaut. She is a film critic for About.com and belongs to the New York Online Film Critics. She lives in Astoria, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, Crude...but incredibly enjoyable!, August 31, 2010

By 

Jennifer Lawrence (DC Metro) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bad Marie: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

Marie spent six years in jail, charged with aiding and abetting after her boyfriend robbed a bank, killing one individual. She was convicted on the charges of accessory to murder and bank robbery. Said boyfriend hung himself in jail, so Marie is alone. She survived her time spent in jail in part due to a book she read, Virginie at Sea.

Despite her checkered past, Marie's childhood friend, Ellen, hires her as a nanny for her precocious daughter, Caitlin. Ellen's husband, Benoit Doniel, just happens to be the author of the book Marie cherish while in prison.

Marie is a very rude, selfish, manipulating character. Her one good trait is that she truly loves Caitlin. But when Ellen & Benoit discover Marie & Caitlin asleep in the bathtub, Marie is fired. The only "real" life she has is spinning out of control and she desperately attempts to retain it. When Benoit suggests that they take off for Paris together, Caitlin in tow, Marie readily agrees.

The life she was struggling to hold on to continues on a downward spiral, and Marie soon discovers the only person she can rely on is herself, and the love of a little girl.

Let me start by saying that there are times that I curse myself for not reading a book sooner. That happened in this case. Within the first few pages, I was hooked, I couldn't stop reading. I read BAD MARIE in one sitting. It took me two hours to read; I simply couldn't tear myself away from it. Marie is a character with traits one is meant to dispise, but I found myself enjoying and appreciating her crude behavior.

The book starts off with the line: "Sometimes, Marie got a little drunk at work." Talk about an attention-getting lead sentence! Based on the title alone, one would tend to think that Marie is a bad person. In reality, she is not, just a victim of circumstances. The time she spent in prison, six years of her young life, forever altered how she views friendships, love, relationships as a whole. I feel that she reacted as best she good, given her history and her experience.

So, go out and pick up a copy of BAD MARIE now. You won't regret it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To be a fly on a nanny's brain!, August 25, 2010

By 

Jazz Baby (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bad Marie: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

I used to work as a nanny myself and I thoroughly enjoyed this fabulous fantasy novel. Which is exactly what it is. I take the whole novel as a sort of romp through the wilderness of wicked thoughts and fantasy that we nannies often have when faced with another day of giving tireless affection and attention, very often for employers who seem to little value our effots. This book is an outlet for the question: What would it be like to steal the trappings of a more "successful" life instead of simply accepting being the hired help? To consume the material gratifications of and even try to get inside the pretty postcard image of lives and relationships seemingly designed by catalogues and recorded in the countless photo albums of wealthy New York homes?

The narrative of "Bad Marie" might exist entirely in the heroine's mind; I half expected it to conclude with a camera pulling back, so to speak, on Marie having daydreamed the entirety of her crimes. I was very glad it didn't. The book, slim as it is, has a hefty and satisfying impact. It follows Marie down some grim passages, as fantasy turns into unexpected disaster upon disaster, but the serene determination of our heroine is fascinating and not at all realistic, which is precisely why the book is so much fun.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bad Influence, Great Book, February 18, 2011

By 

Myfanwy Collins (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bad Marie: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

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 screw up. She's also got a big, twisted heart that wants love and healing and happiness and yet all of the people she's ever loved have let her down; basically, Marie makes bad choices about who to love. Except for one. And that one is the little kid she babysits for, Caitlin. And in this relationship between caregiver and child is the crux of the story.

Of course, being a two-year-old there is one crucial moment when Caitlin does disappoint Marie because she cannot possibly respond in an adult. In that moment, Marie first decides to respond in her typical way, but finds she can't do it. She has grown. She has learned to put this child's needs above her own. And that, my friends, is pretty close the love a parent feels.

Okay, so Marie is still not technically doing the right thing in that she kidnapped Caitlin from first her mother and then her father, but her heart is eventually in the right place. Ultimately, she does feel guilt and does want what's best for Caitlin; she just lacks the skills to figure out how do the right thing.

Here is a book that is both literary and plot driven, humorous and heartbreaking. Here is a book that makes you feel for the protagonist despite the horrible things she does. After all, she is still that hard luck kid whose friend's mother took pity. Okay, she is a grown up and she's doing a horrible thing by keeping this child from her parents, but, in the end, her intentions are sort of good. In the end, I believe she will bring Caitlin home.

This is not to say I want to befriend Marie or have her watch my kid (and sleep with my husband), but I do understand her a bit more. I do feel for her. With that said, I was extremely anxious as I read the final 20 or so pages of this book and felt that I constantly needed to make sure that my kid was okay. As such, I finished the book sitting on the couch next to him as he watched Cyberchase with his bare feet tucked up under my leg to keep them warm. I did not want to let him out of my sight.

All this is to say, it's a book that stirs up a lot of complex emotion and it's a brave book. There are readers, I'm sure, who will judge the book solely on the actions of the character. If they did so, they would be missing out. Bad Marie is a book you will not want to miss.