Bad Marie

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 transcontinental journey, without permission. Delicious in her wickedness, you will fall in love with Marie, even though you hate her! Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

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".

"I didn't want to finish this book any time soon, didn't want to emerge from its dark and wondrous world. My God, what a writer -- absolutely unpredictable, wild with intellect, spilling with charm and sadness and humanity. Marie, the main character here, is literary gold, worthy of Flaubert." Elle

"Marcy Dermansky's slim picaresque follows the misadventures of a nanny who absconds to Paris with her charge and the toddler's dashing father. Marie is the amoral engineer of multiple train wrecks, but in Dermansky's hands she's somehow irresistible." Tish Cohen, author of The Truth About Delilah Blue

"[Marie is] an antiheroine for our time...A page-turning melodrama told with chilled cosmopolitan irony, the moral puzzles at the heart of Bad Marie linger after the delicious meringue of the book has been consumed. Cool trick, Ms. Dermansky." Rick Telander, Chicago Sun Times

"Marcy Dermansky's Bad Marie is so very very bad that I enjoyed every word. A tour de force in mounting suspense as its witless narrator and the baby she's stolen careen from one all-too-probable disaster to the next. Delicious." Barb Johnson, author of More of This World or Maybe Another

"By positing a character who's indulged in all of the deadly sins, Dermansky challenges the reader to finally and forever denounce her character Marie. The fact that this reader can't is testament to the book's power and smarts. A naughty pleasure, a philosophical romp, heady hedonism: what could be better?" Slate

"[I]rresistible. In swift, vivid prose Marcy Dermansky has created a wonderful portrait of a woman who lives right at the edge of acceptable behaviour. I couldn't wait to see what Marie would do next, and I couldn't stop myself from cheering her on." Antonya Nelson, author of Nothing Right

"Marcy Dermansky's Bad Marie is all about the tricksy margins of human experience, stolen moments and the people who steal them." Alyson Noel, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"Marie, the protagonist of Marcy Dermansky's witty, disturbing new novel, is almost completely unlikable, and yet stands out as one of the more interesting characters in recent fiction....Before you know it, the book becomes a skillfully paced page-turner...weirdly hilarious...nothing if not captivating." Mary Robison

"Not enough women write novels like this one. Dermansky is funny and fearless. I like Marie so much because she seems to care so little whether I like her or not. That's a working definition of badass. Bad Marie is one." Creative Loafing

"[Bad Marie is] sinful in all the right ways, delicate, seditious, and deliciously evil." Frederick Barthelme

"Dermansky does proud the long, often sketchy, sometimes illustrious tradition of transgressive fiction with BAD MARIE . . . Her Marie is no cry-baby Anna Karenina fated to a star-crossed love for which she pays with her life." Elle

"Deliciously wicked." Slate

"A wickedly nihilistic and suspenseful tale of erotic mayhem....[E]dgy, speedy, stylish, unpredictable, funny, and heart-stopping." Booklist

"Marcy Dermansky makes it easy to love Marie, a husband-stealing, baby-snatching, underachieving ex-con...Fast-paced and unsentimental, Bad Marie blazes with life." Barb Johnson, author of More of This World or Maybe Another

"Bad Marie unfolds in precise, gripping measure. But as the story keeps taking a turn for the worse, ratcheting up the tension, it is buoyed by the lovely relationship at its heart." Mark Sarvas, author of Harry, Revised

Marcy Dermansky is a MacDowell Fellow and the winner of the 2002 Smallmouth Press Andre Dubus Novella Award and the 1999 Story magazine's Carson McCullers short story prize. Her stories have been published in numerous literary journals, including McSweeney's, Alaska Quarterly Review,and Indiana Review. Dermansky is a film critic for About.com and lives in Astoria, New York.