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Revenge
Revenge is a compelling and psychologically complex story of female friendship, art, and life. When a young painter moves next door to a world class novelist with writer's block, the two women become entwined in a novel described by Michael Cunningham as "compelling and darkly beautiful . . . Never less than gripping, Revenge builds to the realm of the genuinely revelatory."
- GenresFiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
2 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Mary Morris
104 books363 followersI was born in Chicago and, though I have lived in New York for many years, my roots are still in the Midwest and many of my stories are set there. As a writer my closest influences are Willa Cather and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I travel as much as I can and travel fuels everything I do. When I travel, I keep extensive journals which are handwritten and include watercolors, collage as well as text. All my writing begins in these journals. I tend to move between fiction and nonfiction. I spent seventeen years working on my last novel, The Jazz Palace. I think I learned a lot writing that book because the next one only took three years., Gateway to the Moon. Gateway which will be out in March 2018 is historical fiction about the secret Jews of New Mexico. I am also working on my fifth travel memoir about my travels alone. This one is about looking for tigers.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 20, 2020
Andrea Geller, a young painter whose work has stalled, teaches art at a private college, and though it looks like the university is phasing out all such jobs, she can't focus enough to care. She barely knows the names of her students. Though there are two men in her life, one nice and predictable, the other a married man who was separated when they began their affair, they can't hold her attention either. What obsesses her is the strange accident that put her father into a coma that lasted two years until he died, and the ensuing strange behavior of her stepmother Elena. She has worn out those close to her with this obsession. She thinks that all she wants is the truth. And then a friendship develops with her neighbor, the famous novelist Loretta Partlow, and Andrea has what she's long needed, an interested and caring listener. A dark and psychologically intriguing novel about female friendship, family dysfunction, art, and truths. I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning reading this in one go.
August 26, 2025
Spoiler alert: no revenge happened really :/ Overall a cute book with a lil twist at the end of
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 2, 2011
Revenge is the story of Andrea Geller, an artist who teaches at a small college in Hartwood. Andrea has gained some notoriety for a collection of art she once showed at a gallery in New York, but now her work has stalled. She’s also struggling with the recent accidental death of her father. She’s having an affair with a married man. All in all, Andrea’s a bit of a mess.
She happens to live across the street from Loretta Partlow, a highly successful novelist. Although Partlow had been required reading in high school, Andrea isn’t much of a fan until her stepmother mentions loving Partlow’s novel What If? So Andrea revisits her work, the novels and essays on gardening and the poems. She becomes sort of obsessed with Partlow and contrives ways to bump into her.
Revenge is the rather odd story of the friendship which develops between Andrea and Loretta. Andrea enters into the relationship thinking Loretta might use her writing skills to exact a sort of revenge on her stepmother, but her scheme is only incidental to the story. Revenge is not a thriller, exactly, but you do race along its bizarre trajectory hoping for answers which never come.
That’s not to say that I didn’t like Revenge. Morris is a fine writer and I look forward to reading more of her work (and, in fact, I have Acts of God on my tbr shelf). This is, however, one of those books that seems to be promising one thing and then delivers something entirely different.
Ultimately, Morris has written a story about two rather quirky and self-centered women who need each other… until they don’t.
She happens to live across the street from Loretta Partlow, a highly successful novelist. Although Partlow had been required reading in high school, Andrea isn’t much of a fan until her stepmother mentions loving Partlow’s novel What If? So Andrea revisits her work, the novels and essays on gardening and the poems. She becomes sort of obsessed with Partlow and contrives ways to bump into her.
Revenge is the rather odd story of the friendship which develops between Andrea and Loretta. Andrea enters into the relationship thinking Loretta might use her writing skills to exact a sort of revenge on her stepmother, but her scheme is only incidental to the story. Revenge is not a thriller, exactly, but you do race along its bizarre trajectory hoping for answers which never come.
That’s not to say that I didn’t like Revenge. Morris is a fine writer and I look forward to reading more of her work (and, in fact, I have Acts of God on my tbr shelf). This is, however, one of those books that seems to be promising one thing and then delivers something entirely different.
Ultimately, Morris has written a story about two rather quirky and self-centered women who need each other… until they don’t.
November 30, 2007
Picked this up because I read one of her travel books that I loved, but this one was disappointing.
April 11, 2008
This is is one of my all time favorite books. This book completely changed my life!
July 17, 2008
I waited all the way to the last sentence to find the "revenge." It was too much anticipation for way too little payoff.
May 27, 2024
Slim novel but a lot to “get.” Really fine one. Writer’s block of novelist is “loosened “ by artist /teacher/near neighbor at small New England college’s life story & her struggles w coming to grips w her childhood & relationship with her family, especially her father’s death. Twisted cold writer has her own relationship with her son who really doesn’t appear at all except in veiled mention. Ends well. Could have been long short story. But.
Read
July 16, 2020Okay. I didn’t reD the whole thing. I have found her writing in the past to be uplifting but this felt like getting sand rubbed under my skin. I suppose that was the meant afffect in sections but I just kept putting it down. The end was clever. I did figure it out but then I cheated and skipped to the end to see if that wS where she was going
September 14, 2010
There was really no revenge in this book. It was a somewhat interesting portrait of a friendship, but was very slow and subdued. There were intriguing and even ironic twists to the narrative, but they were buried by irrelevant details about the strangely unsympathetic main character and her boring unhappiness.
There wasn't much of a story, mostly just the musings of this woman main character, and her expectations and what she hopes to get out of this relationship. In the beginning, she is sort of depressed or at least anxious about her father's recent death, which she blames on her step-mother. It is mentioned that her other family and friends have been annoyed and alienated by how obsessed she is over her father, and indeed, this aspect of her personality is annoying.
The interesting part is that, after deciding to tell the novelist about it, and hoping it will inspire a novel, she then decides she doesn't want the novelist to write about it. And of course, when the novelist does end up writing about it, she tells not the story the protagonist intended, but a different story, in fact making the father's death the fault of the daughter. I felt like that switch could have been really effective if I sympathized with the character. Of course it had occurred to me from the beginning that if you tell a novelist a story, you have no reason to expect they will treat it a certain way, if they take it up at all.
About two-thirds of the way through, I was actually really engaged and excited, waiting for something unexpected was going to happen. There was definitely a sense that a betrayal was in the offing, that something "bad" was going to happen. The ending was ultimately a bit flat, but I can't deny I was pretty riveted for a while. Still overall, I was unsatisfied with this and can't quite give it 4 stars.
There wasn't much of a story, mostly just the musings of this woman main character, and her expectations and what she hopes to get out of this relationship. In the beginning, she is sort of depressed or at least anxious about her father's recent death, which she blames on her step-mother. It is mentioned that her other family and friends have been annoyed and alienated by how obsessed she is over her father, and indeed, this aspect of her personality is annoying.
The interesting part is that, after deciding to tell the novelist about it, and hoping it will inspire a novel, she then decides she doesn't want the novelist to write about it. And of course, when the novelist does end up writing about it, she tells not the story the protagonist intended, but a different story, in fact making the father's death the fault of the daughter. I felt like that switch could have been really effective if I sympathized with the character. Of course it had occurred to me from the beginning that if you tell a novelist a story, you have no reason to expect they will treat it a certain way, if they take it up at all.
About two-thirds of the way through, I was actually really engaged and excited, waiting for something unexpected was going to happen. There was definitely a sense that a betrayal was in the offing, that something "bad" was going to happen. The ending was ultimately a bit flat, but I can't deny I was pretty riveted for a while. Still overall, I was unsatisfied with this and can't quite give it 4 stars.
July 17, 2013
Wow. This is the second book I've read by Mary Morris. I loved both books for completely different reasons. The Waiting Room had such different tone than this one and I am impressed that the same writer could bring out such strong yet diverse emotions in me. This was one of those books I just couldn't put down. I related to the narrator in ways that made me very uncomfortable through much of the book, I'm curious if others who didn't relate to her felt the same unease. I was constantly questioning the sanity of the narrator but really she was just human... I can't wait to read some more of Ms. Morris' work!
February 22, 2016
Compelling, highly readable, spare, haunting prose. Morris' understanding of human psychology, emotions and behavior is what interests me the most in her character and plot development. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Andrea as artist and teacher. This is my second Morris novel. I have two more of her novels in my pile of to be read and look forward to doing so.
September 16, 2011
Wonderful book, great characters, totally engrossed.
September 16, 2015
This book has a surprise ending. Follow the clues but you probably won't figure it out until the end. Very clever, I thought.
June 22, 2015
1st edition
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews