I Am Mary Dunne

This book, written in the late 1960s by a man, plumbs the depths of a woman's identity crisis. I remember reading it many years ago and being blown away by its insights. Rereading it, I was still impressed that a man could get into a woman's head so well. Affairs, vicious gossip, PMS, Catholic guilt, multiple marriages -- this book has it all, but it's no lightweight "chick lit" novel. I recommend it to anyone who wants to really think about how people relate to each other.

On a whim, I purchased a frayed copy of this book in a thrift shop because it was published the year I was born, and I wanted to get a peek into the culture of that time. I certainly didn't expect to aquire one of the most affecting novels I've ever read. Moore, who also wrote the wrenching JUDITH HEARNE - - filmed as THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE with Maggie Smith in 1987 - - has an elegant and inviting voice that immediately draws you into the persona of his heroine. (The book is told in the first person.) The writer displays subtle but complete authority as a storyteller, alternating humor with pathos, and reading this poignant and eerie character study is (to use a cliche) a treat....one that I would highly recommend.

Is this what the psychiatrists mean when they speak of character dissociation? Throughout a day spent in the emotionally vulnerable state of premenstrual stress, the protagonist continually runs up against reminders of the most trying times of her life, with disastrous emotional echoes.An amazing book. The story of Mary Dunne's life is told in the space of just one day's meetings and memories. And over and over she asks herself the same question throughout the book that you must ask: Is she losing her mind? Or is this just a bad and shaky moment, exacerbated by hormonal changes?Any woman that has ever suffered through a day with the glibly labelled PMS will recognize Mary's Mad Twin. And among those, many of us must also identify with her fearful sense of lost identity, and fears of the wide open edges of mental dysfunction.Frightening, internal, true-to-life - this is not a book to read in an off-balance moment. But it is an amazing internal portrait of a woman. It would be an amazing portrait even if it was written by a woman; how much more so when written by a man! Yet Moore seems to effortlessly empathize completely and realistically. He has once again created a wholly believable and poignant character whom we must follow through the toils of her personal hell.