Marcy Dermansky Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Author Marcy Dermansky got her Bachelor of Arts at Haverford College and her Master of Arts at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern, Mississippi. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey with Nina, her daughter.

“Twins” was a New York Times Editor’s Choice Pick. “The Red Car” was named Best Book of the Year by San Francisco Chronicle, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and Flavorwire. “Bad Marie” was chosen as one of Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writer’s Pick, and named one of the best novels of the entire year in Esquire. The novel was a finalist in the Morning News Tournament of Books. She has also won the Smallmouth Press Andre Dubus Novella Award as well as Story Magazine Carson McCullers short story prize. Powell’s Bookstore named Marcy a Writer to Watch Out For.

Dermansky’s short fiction has been widely anthologized and published, appearing in places like the Lenny Letter, McSweeney’s, The Indiana Review, Guernica, and other places. An essay she wrote, called “Maybe I Loved You”, was published in the best selling anthology called “Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York”.

She writes literary fiction. Her debut novel, called “Twins”, was released in the year 2005.

“Twins” is the first stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2005. The day before identical twins Chloe and Sue turn thirteen, they agree to get matching tattoos so they can prove their bond is stronger than DNA. This is the extraordinary tale of beautiful, blonde twin sisters attempting to survive both each other and adolescence.

Over five years time, Sue and Chloe overcome breakups, unicycle lessons, unhappy Hawaiian vacations, eating disorders, pill abuse, and first painful explorations of sex and love.

Fans love the unpredictability of the story, and the characters start evolving with the good twin not being so perfect and the bad one not being so screwed up in the end. Dermansky is able to write from both twins’ point of view in such a way that makes both of their voices distinct.

“Bad Marie” is the second stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2010. Marie is thirty years old, tall, beautiful, voluptuous, and has just been released after six years in prison for being an accessory to armed robbery and murder. The only job Marie is able to get while on the outside is as nanny for her childhood friend Ellen Kendall, an upwardly mobile Manhattan executive whose mom employed Marie’s mom as a housekeeper.

She moves in with Ellen, Caitlin (Ellen’s angelic child), and Benoit Doniel (a rather handsome French novelist and Ellen’s husband), and things begin to get complicated. Before she knows what she is doing, Marie has absconded to Paris with Benoit and Caitlin. Out of her depth and on the run, Marie is going to travel to distant shores. She will also experience both the lows and highs of lawless living, foreign culture, and motherhood while she tries to figure out how to be an adult, what it really means to be bad, and how deeply she is able to love.

Fans found this one to be a joyride with a blindfolded, bodacious, bad lady behind the wheel, one with the inhibitions of a toddler. This is a delicious and fun book, and readers found themselves reading this one far too quickly. It is a surprising, unique, and enjoyable book to read.

“The Red Car” is the third stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2016. Leah lives in Queens with a possessive husband that she does not love and a long list of unfulfilled ambitions when she is jolted from her tedium by a call from the past. Her friend and beloved former boss, Judy, died in a car accident recently and left Leah her most prized possession. It turns out it was also the instrument in her death: a red sports car.

Judy was the mentor for Leah, one she did not expect to have. She encouraged all of Leah’s dreams, analyzed her love life, and eased her into the world of being an adult during long lunches out of the office. Looking at the jarring disconnect between the life she expected and the life she actually lives, Leah goes to for San Francisco to get Judy’s car.

In days that are defined by sorrow, sex, and some unexpected delight, Leah revisits old lives and loves to find a self that she abandoned years previous. Piercing through this surreal haze is Judy’s enigmatic voice, just as sharp as it ever was while she gives some wry commentary on every move Leah makes.

The book is mordantly funny, tautly wound, and transgressive, as well as being an incisive exploration of one lady’s odd route to self-discovery. Marcy creates a capricious, edgy, and a beautifully haunting heroine. A heroine whose hunt for realization is just as hypnotic and wonderfully unpredictable as the turns and twists of the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Very Nice” is the third stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2019. Rachel Klein never intended to kiss her creative writing professor, but his silky hair, his long eyelashes, and the beautiful yet sad life he laid bare on Twitter, so she does. The kiss is quite nice.

Zahid Azzam never intended on becoming a houseguest in his student’s sprawling Connecticut home, but with the sparkling pool, all the strawberries from Whole Foods, and Rachel’s gorgeous mother, he does. The home is very nice.

Becca Klein never imagined that she would be having a love affair so soon after she got divorced, but her daughter’s professor walks right into her home. He brings with him an apricot standard poodle named Princess, and she does. The whole affair is a terrible idea.

This is a brilliantly funny book of bad behavior with intrigue and sex set among rich people in a gorgeous house with a picturesque swimming pool. Readers found this to be an addictive, audacious, and wickedly bright take on the way people live now.