A Dangerous Woman
Written by Mary McGarry Morris
Narrated by Kimberly Schraf
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Martha Horgan is not like other women. She stares. She has violent crushes on people. She can't stop telling the truth. Martha craves love, independence, and companionship, but her relentless honesty makes her painfully vulnerable to those around her: Frances, her wealthy aunt and begrudging guardian; Birdy, who befriends her, then cruelly rejects her; and Colin Mackey, the seductive man who preys on her desires. Confused and bitter, distrusting even those with her best interests at heart, Martha is propelled into a desperate attempt to gain control over her own life. The sense of impending calamity is almost unbearable in this portrait of a woman who teeters on the edge of madness.
"Morris's magnanimous ability to portray her characters with so much tenderness and cruelty may be her novel's finest strength."-Boston Sunday Globe
Mary McGarry Morris
Mary McGarry Morris grew up in Vermont and now lives on the North Shore in Massachusetts. Her first novel, Vanished, was published in 1988 and was nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. A Dangerous Woman (1991) was chosen by Time magazine as one of the “Five Best Novels of the Year” and was made into a motion picture starring Debra Winger, Barbara Hershey, and Gabriel Byrne. Songs in Ordinary Time (1995) was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, which propelled it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list for many weeks, and it was adapted for a TV movie starring Sissy Spacek and Beau Bridges. Morris’s other highly acclaimed works include the novels Fiona Range (2000), A Hole in the Universe (2004), The Lost Mother (2005), The Last Secret (2009), and Light from a Distant Star (2011), as well as the play MTL: The Insanity File.
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Reviews for A Dangerous Woman
68 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Although I can completely understand why some felt this book was not their cup of tea, I really love Mary McGarry Morris' novels and this is no exception. I think she is one of the most underrated novelists in part because she does her job so well as she tends to focus on the different, the uncomfortable and the painful. And, she does it exceptionally well here with the story of Martha. This character is so interesting to me - fascinating really. We never really find out for 'sure' what Martha is in terms of a diagnosis. We know she's 'off' but not what really causes her very odd and uncomfortable demeanor. I found the character to be so compelling while at the same time so difficult to read about. It gave me a great deal to think about in terms of how I (and society) treats those who are different. How we make assumptions. How we make judgments. I felt that the author's writing of her story really made me feel what it must be like to be Martha as well as what it must be like to be around her. At times, I felt as if I were THERE, watching it all unfold in front of me. I found the story to be heartbreaking overall. The story is dark and there isn't necessarily a light at the end of the dark tunnel. But, in the end, I think that was appropriate. I think a 'happy ending' would have been contrite and missed the entire point of the story. I really enjoyed this book and plan to seek out other books by this author that I haven't yet read.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I much prefered Morris's "Songs in Ordinary Time." Essentially this is a book about a "dangerous" woman who is a woman who just makes her own choices and is a bit odd and different. Nothing too dangerous about that. The protagonist seemed a bit of a hyperbole, though, and I wasn't too interested in her and her choices.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I knew from almost page one that this book was not going to have a happy ending. Useful to learn more and become more compassionate regarding people with emotional problems.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An interesting and worthwhile read. Not exactly my usual style, but nonetheless it kept me going right to the end . . . not because it was in any sense a "thriller" (although a superficial reading might put it in this category), but because the character development made me want to keep reading to find out more about what made the characters tick. I guess the take home message of the book was that if you start off in life a little different from everyone else, you're likely to be treated in such a way that you become more and more isolated from the world, to the point where you become labeled as 'deviant'. The book did particularly focus on women as victims and men as perpetrators, but that's reality, isn't it?Actually there were quite a few shades of gray in the representations of both sexes, and this was one of the very attractive features of the book. No one was a simple goodie or baddie, everyone had a variety of aspects of their character. The more I think about it, the more I am impressed with the strength of the portrayal of the relationships between men and women.I was interested to catch myself being annoyed with the main character - exactly as her fictional friends and acquaintances were. At the same time I felt her feelings of the injustice of the world. That's got to be a sign of good writing, n'est-ce pas? I suppose the only negative for my enjoyment of the book (which is not a criticism of the book per se) was that I didn't personally identify very closely with any of the characters all the time. My allegiances would shift from one to another and various situations unfolded.This is my first Mary McGarry Morris; I'll definitely be back for more.