Marya: A Life
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3.3 • 10 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A deeply intimate psychological portrait of a young woman's tragic childhood, her reinvention as a successful young artist in the literary circles of 1950s New York City, and her struggle to understand and overcome the trauma of her past.
Growing up in the confines of Innisfail, a bleak town in upstate New York, bright and curious Marya endures abandonment, betrayal, and loneliness. A college scholarship offers escape, taking her to New York City, where she makes a name for herself in academic and literary circles. But success cannot overcome the damage of her childhood, pain that haunts Marya’s personal, professional, and romantic relationships, and has left her unmoored.
Psychologically nuanced, rich in insight and emotional complexity, told with the unsettling power of Joyce Carol Oates’s gothic novels, Marya: A Life is an intense look into the psyche of a young woman and an illuminating exploration of how the past reverberates throughout our lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Some formative scenes from the "life'' of an American writer and scholar: At eight, Marya is deserted by her mother when her father is killed by union strike-breakers. Raised by an uncaring aunt and uncle, she is sexually abused by their son. A young priest, the first of Marya's spiritual mentors, dies. At a high school graduation party given partly to celebrate her winning a college scholarship, three classmates cut off most of her hair. Though she distinguishes herself academically at the university, Marya is betrayed by her only female friend and later suffers the death of her first lover, a professor some 30 years her senior. Her next lover, a married publisher who has introduced her to the literary life of New York, dies as well. It is as if Marya's life is fated to rise from the ashes of everyone she cares for. Yet another rebirth seems slated at book's end, when she receives a letter from her long-lost mother which may ``change'' her life. One doubts it. Regardless of the events described, Marya's character undergoes little revision. From the first, she is a dry-eyed, gritty observer of a world whose depradations are presumably more safely viewed from behind the walls of academe. This latest novel from Oates (Solstice is unrelievedly grim. Literary Guild featured alternate. February 24
Customer Reviews
A Life to remember
I couldn't get into this book, The beginning was good but that's about it, I did continue to read the book in hopes it would get better and because I paid for it.
To me felt like a book you would be forced to read at school. A waste of time and money, that's my opinion anyway, others may like the subject, I'm just glad it's finally over.