Mary: An Awakening of Terror

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NAT CASSIDY has been an off-off-Broadway playwright of speculative works that have been well-received by drama critics. I felt like we were spending 85% of the book in Mary's insecurities instead of any action or outside eeriness being addressed. It was a wild ride from start to finish, with some of the most vivid characters I’d read in a long time. If you look for my bookshelf label "MARY Influences," you can see a whole motley batch o' books that helped inspire MARY. FYI, this book has a very long trigger warning, and I suggest that you read it and decide if you want to read this book or skip it.

I find Nat Cassidy's writing to be extremely engaging, boasting a consistent level of hysterical energy, and at times morbidly sarcastic; which softens the overly generous page count that can probably use some further trimming. I won’t spoil anything, but there were three vivid moments where I was fairly put off by what I was reading on the page, and one in particular where I almost stopped reading altogether. The premise had so much potential: what happened if Stephen King’s Carrie was a middle aged woman and had a chance to confront her bullies?

A story of this kind doesn't really need to be more than 400 pages and while I was never really bored I still felt like this could have been trimmed down quite a bit without losing it's magic.

The ominous cover only alludes to what may be one of the most bizarre and creepy reads I’ve read this year. I relate to or at least respect everything Cassidy brought to the table about how hard and unfair it is to be a woman and an aging woman at that. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.The beauty standards, the financial instability, the being too-much but not-enough, the having to have a man or you're broken and worthless. In his foreword to Mary, Nat Cassidy credits and makes a point in noting the strong mark King's titular figure left on him - up to the point where he, as a young boy, elevated her to a kind of matron saint due to her suffering, after seeing and being left shocked and awed by the sight of a bloodied, iconic Sissy Spacek playing Carrie White in the 1976 movie. I was this close to making this one of my favorite books ever, however the last 100 pages just faded. The cover and the description really sucked me in, and will likely do the same to other women of a certain age (yes that is me!

It ended up being one of my favorites of last year, and is genuinely one of the most unique/memorable reading experiences period. Cassidy has a skilled storytelling voice capable of intense, graphic imagery and scary scenes as well as laugh-out-loud humor. It is very commendable that Cassidy highlights this bias to show that what’s going on here is that Mary, as an aging woman who wants nothing more than to be noticed, to be taken seriously, is not being given any worth.

This is a bad attempt to be the next Stephen King, the gratuitous violence is pointless, women enact more violence against each other than the men who have power, and the plot holes are as numerous as the specters. It doesn't matter if you're into Stephen King, Octavia Butler, Jack Ketchum or Shirley Jackson, this is the place to share that love and discuss to your heart's content. While confronting both the bullies of her youth and the new cult that takes Cross as their prophet, Mary discovers that she may have a personal, past-life connection to the murders. Turning internalized patriarchy/misogyny into a literal possession was a brilliant, well-executed spine for the story.