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Marjorie Morningstar is a love story. It presents one of the greatest characters in modern fiction Marjorie, the pretty seventeen-year-old who left the respectability of New York's Central Park West to join the theater, live in the teeming streets of Greenwich Village, and seek love in the arms of a brilliant, enigmatic writer. In this memorable novel, Herman Wouk, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has created a story as universal, as sensitive, and as unmistakably authentic as any ever told.
Read Marjorie Morningstar Herman Wouk Books
"I loved this book when I was a teenager and I decided to read it again as a senior citizen. It's a great read about young romance and growing up. It wears well. It doesn't really have "sexual content" but since it's largely about sex and first love and attraction, I had to check "some sexual content." I think the actual discussion of actual sex takes one paragraph, and it's not the least bit erotic.
This would be a fantastic book for a young person on the verge of that first romance."
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Marjorie Morningstar Herman Wouk Books Reviews :
Marjorie Morningstar Herman Wouk Books Reviews
- I was prompted to read this book when it was mentioned in "The End of Your Life Book Club." I had read Wouk's 2 classics - "The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" - many years ago and loved them both, so I expected this to be a good, old-fashioned engrossing saga. Unfortunately, Marjorie can't hold a candle to those other books. It was interesting to read a coming-of-age novel written in the 50s and compare what was considered to be somewhat scandalous behavior back then to current standards. However, somehow I never really liked Marjorie, and I REALLY didn't like her great love, Noel Airman. The book was too long, and in the end, I was disappointed. Try Wouk's other novels instead.
- I first read this book over 40 years ago. As has happened over the years with this and other supremely well written books I've read, I had an urge to read it again. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my hard copy so I went for the kindle version.
If your chosen genres are action, science fiction, horror, or mystery, this story will be quite a change. It's about a Jewish girl's life in New York. Sound boring? Anything but!
Wouk's talent for portraying the personalities of everyday people and their lives is amazing. The reader will absolutely feel that they know the characters in the story, and will find themselves anticipating the actions of each individual.
Full of the joys, sorrows and disappointments of life, this wonderfully written book is richly satisfying. - I loved this book when I was a teenager and I decided to read it again as a senior citizen. It's a great read about young romance and growing up. It wears well. It doesn't really have "sexual content" but since it's largely about sex and first love and attraction, I had to check "some sexual content." I think the actual discussion of actual sex takes one paragraph, and it's not the least bit erotic.
This would be a fantastic book for a young person on the verge of that first romance. - We meet Marjorie Morgenstern as a teenage girl in 1933 with a dream, two dreams really, of stardom in the theater and of romance. We leave her as a woman of the mid 1950s, married, with children and a successful husband and, possibly, one of her dreams fulfilled.
Along the way, Herman Wouk introduces us to an extraordinary cast of characters that include Noel Airman, the elusive, rebellious (against common life and religious tradition) passion of Marjorie's heart; Wally Wronken, for whom Marjorie is a passion; Samson-Aaron, the embarrassing uncle consumed by a passion for life; Mrs. Morgenstern, the demonstrative mother and Mr. Morgenstern, her modestly successful importer father; Marsha Zelenko, her on and off again friend, who marries very well, and her crazy parents; the mysterious Mike Eden, who sells chemicals in Nazi Germany and rescues Jews clandestinely; and various others, among the most notable the sleazy Broadway producer Guy Flamm, who raises Marjorie's hope of becoming the star, Morningstar, only to dash her dreams with reality.
As always, Wouk excels at setting the many scenes in the book the period and its upper middle class mores, the rituals of life, the proper behavior of young women and men, especially the social constraints on women, the summer camp, the Bar Mitzvah, the wedding, and the theatrical world. Some may find his pacing leisurely, though thoughtful readers will discern his purpose painting a detailed portrait of the period between the onset of the Great Depression and the start of World War II. While all the characters are Jewish, the values of the Morgenstern, Ehrmann, and even Zelenko families reflect those of the times.
Readers will find several scenes particularly good, enlightening, and filled with humor, often riotous. Wouk writes comedy very well and you'll find yourself shaking with laughter reading about the Bar Mitzvah party, the most incredible Seder ever, disrupted by the antics of Neville the Devil, the summer camp South Winds, and the wedding.
In the end, as we all realize from the beginning, Marjorie marries and settles into a comfortable, expected and accepted upper middle class life as the wife of a successful man. Modern readers may wonder how such an intelligent and ambitious young woman could end up a 1950s stereotype. Yet, in this too, Wouk provides an accurate rendering of the period, for countless thousands of women with dreams followed in Marjorie's footsteps. Then came the 1960s and with it social revolution for American women. - This is an old favorite revisited. It is set in the thirties. It follows about 5 years of a 17 year old girl's life and then revisits her about 20 years later. She begins as a self centered teen using others for her goal of status. Then she becomes obsessed with being an actress. She gets plenty of knocks in life as we all do. She begins to mature and finally realizes she is not going to be a star. She also gets her heart broken several times by the same man. She finally realizes that he is not the dashing charmer that she idolized.
- I enjoyed this novel for its descriptions of life at a certain time and place. I did become frustrated with some of the very lengthy passages which felt like the author using the novel as a platform for his theories. The ending is extremely disappointing and infuriating, but given the time period it reflects, probably accurate for most women in that situation. There's probably something for every woman to relate to in this novel, but at its heart it is firmly against the qualities that make the heroine so engaging and memorable.
- This book will give some insight to living in 1930s USA. The characters are believable as are their lives and the things they do. I love being transported back in time and realizing that history repeats itself, somewhat. Every era has its good and bad aspects. First book I've read in a long time that captured my interest from start to finish.
