Margarettown - Softcover

Gabrielle Zevin

3.47

1,743 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1401359965 ISBN 13: 9781401359966

Publisher: Miramax, 2006

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In the playful tradition of The Time Traveler's Wife comes an enchanting story about love in its many forms, and a man's timeless journey into the unknowable territory of the woman he loves. From the moment they first sleep together -- piled atop seven mattresses in her dorm room -- N. is pulled ineluctably into a rich and enchanted relationship with Margaret Towne, a woman who will introduce him to worlds he never dreamed existed.

Written as a final letter from N. to his young daughter, Jane, Margarettown recounts the story of his relationship with Margaret. Margaret Towne is the name of the woman he loves and of the town she introduces him to, Margarettown. It is a place both real and imagined, located somewhere in upstate New York and home to a mysterious "family" of women named Old Margaret, Marge, Mia, Maggie, and May. In this strange and fantastical place, N. and Margaret become joined forever. Margarettown is a story of what it takes to love the same person for a lifetime and about the impossibility of really knowing anything about who it is we have come to love.

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About the Author:

Gabrielle Zevin is a screenwriter and the author of a young adult novel, Elsewhere. She lives in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly:

An unusual telling of boy-meets-girl, Zevin's debut reiterates female complexity through a husband and daughter's experiences with one surprising woman. N., the earnest narrator, describes meeting captivating, mercurial Maggie Towne when he's a grad student. They travel to her childhood home, Margarettown, where he finds no inhabitants save women named Margaret: there's giggling girl May, sullen teenager Mia, bitter middle-aged Marge, wise elderly Old Margaret and suicidal artist Greta, conspicuous by her absence. It's not giving much away to reveal that these women are all Maggie herself ("you won't find a woman in the world that doesn't have a couple other women inside her," she says), though whether Margarettown is a real place or N.'s invention is left in doubt. While the book's first half concerns N.'s struggles to love and understand the various manifestations of Margaret, the end belongs to their daughter, Jane, who reads her father's version of her parents' courtship after they both have died. In between, subplots—about N.'s happy-go-lucky guardian, Margaret's and N.'s adulteries, and N.'s rejected former girlfriend, who eventually falls for N.'s sister, Bess, and raises Jane with her—sometimes feel like padding on a conceit that would have been better expressed in a short story. But the story is darkly whimsical and Zevin's writing is both playful and touching. Agent, Jonathan Pecarsky at William Morris. (May)

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