Bad Marie

Genuinely sexy, dark and subversive but also freaking weirdly hilarious.

The Nervous Breakdown

 

 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”.

Esquire listed Bad Marie as one of Best New Book Books of 2010. Bad Marie was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick for 2010 and has been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Elle, Esquire, Slate, and Newsday.

Order Bad Marie

   
   

 


Reviews

Left Right
“Marie is the amoral engineer of multiple train wrecks, but in Dermansky’s hands she’s somehow irresistible.” –Time Magazine 

“Dermansky does proud the long, often sketchy, sometimes illustrious tradition of transgressive fiction with Bad Marie.” –Elle
“A wickedly nihilistic and suspenseful tale of erotic mayhem . . . .[E]dgy, speedy, stylish, unpredictable, funny, and heart-stopping.” – Booklist 
 ”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.” — Marion Winik, Newsday 
“Deliciously wicked.” – Slate
“When you pick up this book, make sure you’ve left yourself enough time to read it in its entirety because there’s no putting it down. The most seductive first person narration we’ve read in a long time.” –McSweeney’s  
“Badass.” –Esquire 
“Delightfully dark and surprisingly deep.” –Bookslut 
“[Dermansky] hit the jackpot. Nothing if not captivating.” –Creative Loafing Charlotte
“I adored [Marie]. More than that, I found her refreshing.” — Emily St. John Mandel, The Millions 
 “Bad Marie is the Betty Blue of novels: not just genuinely sexy, dark and subversive but also freaking weirdly hilarious, and if there is any logic in this world it will become both a bestseller and a cult classic.” — Gina Frangello, The Nervous Breakdown
“One of the most witty, twisted, and even heartbreaking stories I’ve read in a long time.” Roxane Gay, HTMLGIANT 

 

Advance Praise

Left Right
“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.” — Mary Robison

“Reading Marcy Dermansky’s BAD MARIE is like spending a rainy afternoon in a smaller, older movie theater watching a charming French movie with a woman (or a man) you’ve just met on the street and already like far too much. It’s sinful in all the right ways, delicate, seditious, and deliciously evil.” — Frederick Barthelme
“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?” — Antonya Nelson
“Marcy Dermansky is one of the most demanding novelists of our generation—she leaves her readers little time for friends, food, or sleep. BAD MARIE is impossible to turn away from. It is as empathic as it is disturbing, as delicate as it is savage. Sly, honest, and extraordinary, this gem of a book should come with a warning: you’ll have to remind yourself to breathe.” — Tish Cohen, author of The Truth About Delilah Blue
“Marcy Dermansky makes it easy to love Marie, a husband-stealing, baby-snatching, underachieving ex-con. The author sends us rocketing along on a brilliant, bumpy ride across the ever-changing landscape formed by the simple loves, the staggering losses and the bad choices that are Marie’s life. Fast-paced and unsentimental, Bad Marie blazes with life.” — Barb Johnson, author of More of This World or Maybe Another
“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.” — Terese Svoboda, author of Cannibal and Pirate Talk or Mermelade
“What I don’t know about the inner lives of women could fill a book–– but not this book, which has a title character that is bad in all the right ways and all the better for it. Marcy Dermansky’s BAD MARIE is all about the tricksy margins of human experience, stolen moments and the people who steal them.” — Ben Greenman, author of What He’s Poised to Do and Please Step Back
“If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to say just what you think to people who annoy you, to walk away from your life, to enjoy the comfort of strangers, then I suspect you will find BAD MARIE irresistible. 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.” — Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street and Eva Moves The Furniture
“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. The unlikely bond between Marie and Caitlin brings our heroine comfort and love in a world determined to deny her both.”— Mark Sarvas, author of Harry, Revised

 

Interviews & Articles

The New York Times, “Nannies Still Draw A Keen Audience”
Los Angeles Times, Marcy on F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Bat Segundo Show, Marcy talks to Ed Champion
The Nervous Breakdown, Self Interview and Excerpt
Lit Kicks, Interview with Levi Asher
Largehearted Boy, Marcy’s  Bad Marie Playlist
Fictionaut, The Fictionaut Five with Meg Pokrass
Galley Cat Blog Talk Radio, Morning Media Menu Interview
Cooking the Books with Emily Gould, at The Awl
Writers on Process
The House Next Door, Interview with Lauren Wissot
Break Thru Radio, Book Talk with Marcy
The Bergen Record, “Dermansky Earns Praise”
Current Reader, Interview

 

Blogs

“More happens in the first fifty pages of Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky than in entire novels I’ve read this year. It’s the lightning speed of the story that makes this book so damn hard to put down.” — Jodi Chromey

“A fast and fun read.” – Tattered Cover Book Blog

“Fascinating and wonderful, and huge kudos to Marcy Dermansky for making Marie so sympathetic.” — Reading and Ruminations

“Settle down with a glass of cava and chocolate truffles for this one—because it will make you want to indulge yourself—and savor the exquisitely heady and edgy world of bad, bad, bad Marie.” — The Barcelona Review

“Marcy Dermansky has crafted a character in Marie that is the best kind of magnetic–you want to slap her (as her employer does at one point) and go out for tequila shots with her at the same time.” –Gutenberg Girls

“Fiction just got fun again, friends… Bad Marie makes for a fantastic cult classic. Something passed along between friends and raved about in dark booths of Chinese Restaurants. Our little secret.” — Minnesota Reads

“A riotous ride.” — Read All Day

“Incredibly well-written and captivating.” — The Betty and Boo Chronicles

“Fascinating.” — Beth Fish Reads

“Oddly and completely compelling. Dermansky’s prose is purposeful and eloquent.” –The Book Fetish

“Unpredictable and unusual.” –Daemon’s Books

“Go out and pick up a copy of Bad Marie now.  You won’t regret it.” –Jenn’s Bookshelves

“Go pick up a copy and get comfortable because you won’t be able to put it down.” –My Books. My Life.

“I tore through Bad Marie and loved every minute of it.” –The Book Lady’s Blog

“Hilarious and gleefully unrepentant.” –The Rejectionist

“Sexually raw and unflinching, Bad Marie is a provocative, seductive work by a fiercely talented writer.”  – The Current Reader

“An utterly delightful gobble of a book.” — Fernham

“It’s nearly impossible not to get sucked into [the] story.” — Daemon’s Books

“Bad Marie is funny, poignant, a little naughty, a little dark, and completely unputdownable. An utterly compelling read.” — In Spring It Is the Dawn

“Highly recommended!!” – Jordan Hoffman

“[A] gem of a novel.” — My Novel Reviews

“Loved to hate this drunken kidnapping hedonistic ex-con bad girl.” — iEATbooks

“I LOVED it from the first line [...] to the last! I didn’t want it to end. Read it!” — Karyn Bosnak

“Dermansky has excelled in writing  a mesmerizing character study and unrelenting page turner all at the same time.” — Linus’s Blanket

“This novel should come with a surgeon general’s warning it’s so addictive.”  –BookSexy

“An absolutely fascinating character.” –Devourer of Books

“I absolutely could not set this book down.” –Old Bookworm

“Whip-smart, sexy, funny. This novel is artisan chocolate dipped in top-drawer whiskey.” –Emily Gray Tedrowe

“An extremely enjoyable book with a fascinating lead character.” –toothy books

“Stunning.” –BookChickdi

“This book fucking rocks.” –Shishnit

“One fantastic summer read.” –Hybrid Mom

“Maybe my favorite book published new this year.” — bookreviewsbycurtbusch

Jewcy Top 10 Fiction Books Of 2010 — Jewcy

“One of the best five books of the year — impossible to put down once you start.” — The Staff Recommends

“Best Single-Sitting Guilty Pleasure Read.” — The Book Lady’s Blog

One of the “Top Five Overlooked Fiction Titles of 2010″ — NY1

One of the “Best 9 Books of 2010″ — Minnesota Reads

“Read this in two breathless sittings. Dermansky channels the cool brilliance of Patricia Highsmith.” — This Machine Kills Purists

“A delightful roller coaster of an adventure novel for literature lovers.”  — nomadreader

“There is a reason people are RAVING about this book.” — Book Magic

“What an utterly compelling, sexy, darkly humorous and totally dysfunctional little novel this is!”  — Des Greene, Novel Suggestions

“Marie’s simple spontaneity is a poor way to live, but a fine way to carry a novel.” — Hungry Like a Woolf