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Published May 2000
400 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Morris returns with Fiona Range, a powerful story about a promiscuous woman trying to get her life in order. Raised by a prominent aunt and uncle near Boston, thirty-year-old Fiona Range has developed a high threshold for emotional pain. Her recklessness, generosity, and poor judgment have landed her in more scrapes than her well-bred family--or small-town community--can tolerate.
Beautiful, volatile, and smart tongued (or trashy, erratic, and wild, depending on whom you ask), Fiona hits rock bottom with a strange man in her bed after a hapless end to a party. Determined to change, Fiona is certain she fits in somewhere beyond the disapproving family her unwed mother abandoned her to. Maybe comfort lies with Patrick Grady--the scowling Vietnam veteran, scarred in face and soul, her rumored father who wants absolutely nothing to do with her. Undeterred by this dangerous man's threats and angered by the warnings of family and friends, she begins to pursue him.... Fiona Range is the compelling story of goodness undermined by guilt, of perilous obsession, and of the twisted bond of betrayal committed in the name of love.
"Fiona's headlong self-destruction distance her from the reader's sympathy. Yet there is sustained tension in the narrative, and the denouement packs a thriller's excitement." - Publishers Weekly.
"Morris is in complete charge of her hardscrabble literary territory and Fiona is without question her most complicated, compelling character to date." - Entertainment Weekly.
"As readable as its heroine is compulsive, this is the kind of book that makes you stay up half the night." - The New Yorker.
"A fascinating portrait of a woman whose instinctive sense of mystery about herself leads her to uncover that secret at all costs." - The Chicago Tribune.
"Although slow moving at times, the ending, with its twist of plot and hidden secrets revealed, makes this a worthy read." - Booklist.
"Morris has a wonderful ear for dialogue and, here, presents us with a complex, compelling character. But, ultimately, this soap operalike tale is repetitive and the answers to those secrets are hardly surprising." - Kirkus Reviews.
"She can bring the ordinary to life with the sheer clarity of vision. She knows how a house with children in it sounds at night, what the heat and bustle in a kitchen feel like before a family dinner and how indiscretions arise in a dining room when everyone is flushed with wine." - New York Times Book Review.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Author website
Mary McGarry Morris was born in Meriden, Connecticut in 1943 and raised in Rutland, Vermont with three younger brothers. She was educated at Mount Saint Joseph Academy in Rutland, the University of Vermont, and the University of Massachusetts.
Her first novel Vanished was published in 1988. It was nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. A Dangerous Woman was published in 1991 and was chosen by Time magazine as one of the "Five Best Novels of the Year." It was made into a motion picture starring Debra Winger, Barbara Hershey, and Gabriel Byrne.
Songs In Ordinary Time was published in 1995. Two years later, it was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection, which propelled it to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list for many weeks, as well as making ...
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