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.
After Marie moves in with Ellen, Ellen’s baby Caitlin, and Ellen’s husband, a 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 travels 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.”
Bad Marie was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick. Marcy was profiled in The New York Times, reviewed in Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Elle, Slate, and Newsday. Bad Marie was short listed for the Morning News Tournament of books, and included on numerous best of the year lists, including Esquire, The Nervous Breakdown, Jewcy, Largehearted Boy, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
Reviews:
“Dermansky does proud the long, often sketchy, sometimes illustrious tradition of transgressive fiction with Bad Marie.” – Elle Magazine
"Marie is the amoral engineer of multiple train wrecks, but in Dermansky’s hands she’s somehow irresistible." -- Mary Pols, Time
“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
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
"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
"One of the most witty, twisted, and even heartbreaking stories I’ve read in a long time." --Roxane Gay, HTML Giant
"Badass." -- Esquire
“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 Internet Tendency
"Bad Marie functions through what might be termed “stealth experimentalism.” It is so breezy and enjoyable that one may simply fail to note that it exercises not just the heart but the mind." -- Shelley Salamensky, Los Angeles Review of Books
Praise
"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
“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 is available for purchase at your local bookstore or online.
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