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 Lif e is an intense look into the psyche of a young woman and an illuminating exploration of how the past reverberates throughout our lives.
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[No one was responsible, she hadn't touched the jack or she'd touched it so gently it couldn't possibly have slipped, but suddenly everything buckled and gave way-the car crashed down, Lee screamed in shock and pain, Marya stood there frozen, mute, staring]***
(Ecco Press, paperback, 18 March 2014 (first published 1986), bought from Amazon)
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Marya: A Life starts off really well.
I enjoyed the book for the first half, mainly the chapters that detailed her unhappy, traumatic childhood. These sections are well written and Marya is an easy person to connect with and feel empathy for.
However, things started to go downhill after the halfway point when focus shifts to Marya's academic life.
I found the pace of the novel changes from this point, becoming slow and long-winded to the point of tedium. The last 100 pages were a slog to get through.
Unfortunately, Marya starts to change as well and I found my sympathy for her the trauma she experienced as a child gradually waning. She's just not a particularly nice person. She's eccentric as a child and this comes across as sweet. However, as an adult she is cold and prickly and very dislikeable.
I appreciate what JCO tried to do with Marya: A Life and her prose is as great as ever but the book doesn't hold together.
