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    Marya: A Life
    Marya: A Life
    Marya: A Life
    Audiobook12 hours

    Marya: A Life

    Written by Joyce Carol Oates

    Narrated by Sadie Alexandru

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 28, 2020
    ISBN9780063022447
    Author

    Joyce Carol Oates

    Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

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    Reviews for Marya

    3.5/5

    54 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Marya grows up in isolation in a small town in New York. Her mother abandoned her and her two brothers and she is raised by an aunt. Repeatedly raped and abused, she devotes herself to intellectual pursuits and seeks to flee her town forever. This intimate novel walks us through Marya's most dramatic moments as she tries to build a life for herself in a cruel world.A beautifully written novel about a powerfully resilient woman.
    • 4/5
      This book is said to be "my most personal" book by the author. It is her 17th book and was just released as an audible book in April this year. This is the story of Marya, a very resilient girl, who survived. She survived poverty, lost of her parents at an early age, sexual abuse, rape, bullying. You name it. It happened. This was one strong woman. Marya grew up in a rural area, got a scholarship to college because she was smart. She was also "striking" in appearance, probably beautiful but her manner was cold and she protected herself constantly from "feelings" hurting her. She did well in college, published early, fell in love finally, but never married. Not sure how autobiographical the story is cause it is a novel.Themes: defenselessness of female a child; adolescent behavior; the place of the brilliant, sensitive person in an ordinary world; the struggle with religious faith; and the politics of the academic worldRated 3.4
    • 3/5
      So disappointing. Small town girl, with grit and determination makes good. Marya is an unlikeable closed off character. A series of short stories made into a novel. Disappointing abrupt ending. Not one of her best novels.
    • 4/5
      Marya's life is described in chapters dealing with a traumatic childhood, religious observations, college experiences, a career in academia, and relationships. Throughout it all, the overwhelming feeling is one of loneliness and a life lived searching for a sense of belonging. The chapter dealing with thoughts on religion reminded me of Flannery O'Connor. The abrupt ending, although disconcerting, is probably intentional. I think this book is brilliantly written, and perhaps gives us more of an insight into JCO as a person than most of her fiction.
    • 2/5
      This book frustrated me. This is my first Oates read and I can't say that it made a good impression.