MEMORABLE CHARACTERS IN CONTEMPORARY American fiction are rare. The instinct among today’s fiction writers seems to be to go—vomit—likable. Maybe all the news we read about the waning influence and market performance of fiction has made us skittish. I think a lot of us, for whatever reason, operate under the wrongheaded notion that readers want to read about someone who is just like them, someone to root for and cry with. Reflect mass America and your novel will resonate with mass America, must be the logic. The result is usually bland prose, forgettable characters, inconsequential novels, more news stories about the waning influence and market performance of literature. What authors so often get wrong is that Americans are not as sweet and sympathetic as we want to believe ourselves to be. We are self-absorbed and self-interested. We do what we must but would rather do what we want. That is essential to America—own up to it, I say. Any other kind of protrayal of Americans in literature or art is not an honest one—it is flattery and pandering for cheap entertainment purposes. But worse, it is boring. And therefore easily forgotten. And readers know this. Look at Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Captain Ahab: A delinquent, a brat, and a vengeful lunatic. And the three greatest characters Americans have ever produced in any medium. What readers really want—even if they may not know it—is someone who is bad. Bad is interesting. Bad is true. Bad is likable. Because bad is unforgettable.

In her second novel, Bad Marie (Harper Perennial, 2010), Marcy Dermansky has taken the moodiness of French existential literature, the symbolism of New Wave French cinema, the gritty efficient shades-of-gray aesthetic of noir, the childlike simple-profound prose and frank twisted humor of Kurt Vonnegut, and the fatefulness and innocence of Forrest Gump, and then turned Forrest Gump on his head, made Forrest Gump a woman, gave this female bizarro Forrest Gump big tits and irresistible appetites and bad fortune and disastrous taste in men to create a very, very good novel that stars one of the most unforgettable, likable bad characters in American literature since Patrick Bateman.

What Bad Marie is about depends on your point of view. One kind of person would say it is about this: Ex-con Marie, who is so self-absorbed she might have Asperger’s syndrome, gets out of prison after serving six years for accessory to bank robbery and murder. She goes to the only one who’ll take her in: her best friend from childhood, Ellen. Ellen is so decent and goodhearted that she somehow overcomes the fact that Marie screwed her boyfriend in high school and offers her a job taking care of her toddler, Caitlin. Marie pays Ellen back for her benevolence and trust by screwing her husband, kidnapping Caitlin, whom she’s grown creepily obsessed with, and running off with both to Paris, where she proceeds to do whatever she needs to do to keep getting what she wants, when she wants it—and to avoid being sent back to prison.

Another kind of person would say Bad Marie is about Marie, who grew up impoverished and alienated with a horrible mother. It is about Marie falling in love and trying to be who she is and suffering the cruel consequences with which the world punishes those who dare do such things. She first falls in love with a man named Juan Jose. Finally, for the first time in her hard life, she is happy. Then one day Juan Jose shows up on her doorstep covered in blood, having just participated in a bank robbery in which his partner shot and killed the guard. She has no idea he is a criminal—and he isn’t, he had to do it for his family, living in utter poverty in Mexico. Anyway, he needs her to help him. Loyal and in love, of course she drives him to his family in Mexico to hide out. They get arrested and both go to prison. In prison, Juan Jose kills himself. Marie is able to keep herself afloat after this only by reading and rereading a particular novel she’s stumbled across in the prison library. She loves the novel—the man who wrote it must be the only one left in the whole world who understands her, who is like her. When she is released, after six hard years, the only place she has to go is to Ellen’s, her friend from childhood. Ellen was never truly Marie’s friend. Marie’s mother was Ellen’s family maid. And Ellen’s mother made Ellen be friends with Marie out of pity. In high school, they had a falling out when Ellen’s boyfriend got Marie drunk and took advantage of her and Ellen blamed Marie for it. Anyway, Ellen takes perverse pleasure in having the toxic dynamic back to the way it should be, in her mind—Marie the help and Ellen the boss. It’s unhealthy, but with her criminal record this is Marie’s only option for employment. And it turns out she’s very good at and enjoys caring for Ellen’s toddler, Caitlin, more than she ever imagined she would. And it also turns out, in a twist so unlikely that it must be some kind of fate or divine intervention, that Ellen is married to none other than the man who wrote that novel Marie loves, Benoit. Yes, Benoit—Ellen’s husband, Caitlin’s father—is the only one left in the world who is like Marie. Marie heroically resists acting on her love for Benoit, but it turns out that he shares her feelings—they are soul mates after all, and his and Ellen’s marriage is an unhappy one. So Marie and Benoit fall in love. They sleep together. A lot. Because they are in love. They do it in Benoit’s bed. Which is also Ellen’s bed. But it’s his bed too. And it’s such a nice bed. Anyway, he asks her to run off with him to Paris. They do. They take Caitlin, the baby, of course—he could never leave behind his child. From there, Marie is victim over and over to unwelcome surprises and tough breaks and forces beyond her control. She gets by and stays afloat only by taking pleasure in the small things and bravely always trying to see the bright side of situations and making the best of things—which, at the end of the day, is what we all must do.

Bad Marie is about Marie, a self-absorbed misanthrope who does whatever she wants.

And Bad Marie is about Marie, a wounded outsider who does whatever she must.

Either way, the unpredictable results are absurd, grotesque, hilarious, and heartbreaking.

It’s a short, seemingly simple novel but there’s so much to it. And it is such a pleasure to read—sharp, quick, funny. Dermansky, who lives in New York and is also a film critic, has clearly put so much care and attention into getting the voice right and crafting her story until it is pitch-perfect, sharp as a diamond, delicately intricate as a house of cards. The disaffected, deadpan, often vulgar tone makes the novel. For example:

“Benoit thinks that you are immature.”

This interested Marie. Why immature? Was that all he had said? What hadn’t he said? They had talked about her. Was Ellen testing her husband with Marie? She was out of her mind, taking a risk like that.

“Of course I am immature. Look at my sneakers.”

Marie raised her leg onto the table, displaying her purple canvas high-tops. She had missed her sneakers when she was in prison. Ellen frowned. The waiter appeared at the table…. He also frowned at Marie, her purple Converse All-Stars on the table. Marie could smell the crispy squid. Marie loved crispy squid.

And:

The channels were all French, channel after channel, even the American films and TV shows she recognized were in French, until she came to CNN World News. News of the world. Marie could not remember the last time she had taken any interest in anything besides herself. She turned off the television.

And:

The hard violent thrusts of the marine biologist were painful, almost violent, and Virginie felt strangely awake for the first time. She cut her back on a rock in the sand, bleeding, as she joked after, from two holes.

And:

Caitlin’s shit was a runny green.

And:

Marie looked at Juan Jose, who didn’t acknowledge her plea for help, because he was just an image, because he was dead.

Bad Marie has love, crime, runny green shit, violent thrusts, and two bleeding holes. In other words, you’ll love it—and won’t ever forget it.

Buy it.

February 2011

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