Mary is about to have her 50th birthday, and she is going through some normal and not-so-normal experiences.

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. Fired from her job in New York, she moves back to her hometown, hoping to reconnect with her past and inner self. It's menopause, now stop talking crazy and move along, I have another patient to see type of attitude. I also included in the Acknowledgements page a list of the books that were inspirational to me when writing MARY.Mary doesn't have a lot of memories after her parents died in a fire, but she knows she was bullied and unhappy. Mary is honestly not an interesting character, and I think we were supposed to root for her, similar to Carrie, but the whole book had me going what is going on now. Honestly though look at the world what's the difference because this stuff and worse happens every day to literal children.

As a playwright, Nat is known as "one of New York City's rising playwrights, with numerous productions and awards, critical acclaim, and a reputation for producing intelligent, bold, darkly comic plays with one foot in horror and the other in literary allusion" (Usher Nonsense). Also, he clearly has a lot of love for “Carrie”, as in his author’s note he explains that Mary is a reimagining of a woman like Carrie who does make it past the night of Prom, and what that would look like. Playwright and podcaster Cassidy’s razor-sharp horror debut explores women’s roles as either prey or predator and cuts deeply into the societal structures that promotes the split. There are so many fantastic problems brought up in this book and that's something I adore about horror.Not that I really believe in solid good or evil; they are simply two symbolic extremes, and I dig a little evil in my literature. It was a wild ride from start to finish, with some of the most vivid characters I’d read in a long time. I thought this was a novel about a woman who had suffered some trauma or breakdown in her life, now trying to cope with menopause and further emotional and physical upset.

I think there was some interesting parts of it (the linkage between Greek mythology and all of that) but it gets buried in this book. Mary feels 'unhinged' from start to finish, which is meant as a compliment because I appreciate when a story is intentionally straying away from common tropes and formulaic arcs. Overall, I really liked the voice that Nat Cassidy gave Mary Mudgett, and I liked some of the creative and scary aspects of the novel as well.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. My final recommendation: This is an original, quirky, fun book that no two readers will experience quite the same. Not because its about a woman going through peri-menopause, but because of its insight in to the female condition.

But being back home brings something ugly and angry back to life in Mary, and she slowly starts to try to investigate the town's history and her connection to a serial killer who was shot dead by the police almost 50 years ago. 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 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.Edit; so here is my long review and I even wrote a longer one on my blog ( https://proteandepravity. Originally inspired by Steven King’s Carrie, the author began writing this horror novel when he was just thirteen years old. Especially since we had a ton of reveals that showed us who Mary really was as a kid before she got "sent away. 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.