I Am Mary Dunne

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I Am Mary Dunne
IAmMaryDunne.jpg
First edition
Author Brian Moore
Publisher Jonathan Cape
Publication date
19 June 1968 (US); 17 October 1968 (UK)
Preceded by The Emperor of Ice-Cream (1965) 
Followed by Fergus (1970) 

I Am Mary Dunne is a novel, first published in 1968, by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore about one day in the life of a beautiful and well-to-do 31-year-old Canadian woman living in New York City with her third husband, a successful playwright. Triggered by seemingly unimportant occurrences, the protagonist / first person narrator remembers her past in a series of flashbacks, which reveal her insecurities, her bad conscience concerning her first two husbands, and her fear that she is on the brink of insanity.

I Am Mary Dunne has been described as "perhaps [Brian Moore's] best book". [1] Robert Fulford, writing in Canada's The Globe and Mail , calls it "[a] feminist novel written before the wave of feminist novels began". [2]

In its original draft, I Am Mary Dunne was called A Woman of No Identity. [3]

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References

  1. Head, Dominic (2006). The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, third edition. p. 762. ISBN   978-0521831796.
  2. Fulford, Robert (12 January 1999). "Brian Moore: A writer who never failed to surprise his readers". The Globe and Mail . Retrieved 6 February 2016.
  3. Craig, Patricia (2002). Brian Moore: A Biography. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p.  199. ISBN   978-0747560043.

Further reading