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WORK TITLE: Curious Affairs
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.maryjanemyers.com
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES: Mary Jane Myers lives in Los Angeles, where she is a certified public accountant. She holds degrees from the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Southern California Law School.
NOTE: She is around 70 years old.
PERSONAL
Born c. 1948.
EDUCATION:Graduate of Pennsylvania State University and the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, short-story writer, and certified public accountant.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
A law school graduate, Mary Jane Myers has worked as a certified public accountant. She is also the author of the debut short story collection titled Curious Affairs. Myers presents thirteen stories that primarily focus on women and the hardships they are facing. Frustrated and lonely, the women in these stories often are pondering the turns their lives have taken in tales that typically contain a bit of magical realism. Ranging from administrative assistants to accountants, the women are often jolted out of their sometimes misguided beliefs or trust in a system that has not served them well.
In a story titled “The Maui Stone,” Myers presents a strange tale that involves a talking lizard and an ancient Greek poet who is channeled by one of the characters. Diane is a 42-year-old woman dating a Jungian therapist who is into New Age beliefs and lifestyles. While on a trip to the Hawaiian island of Maui, Diane finds a stone that will ultimately change everything. Another story involves a woman name Barbara on an Aegean cruise with her beautiful, estranged sister. On the cruise Barbara begins mysterious chanting strange phrases in what she believes is Greek.
While many of the stories contain elements of magical realism, some are based in everday reality. In addition, the stories “The Beautiful Lady” and “The Miracle of the Shell Flowers” focus on biographical religious legends. A Kirkus Reviews contributor felt many of the characters were difficult to sympathize with and called Curious Affairs “a collection of mysterious encounters.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review of Curious Affairs.
ONLINE
Mary Jane Myers website, https://www.maryjanemyers.com (June 24, 2018).
Mary Jane Myers
Mary Jane Myers lives in Los Angeles. She holds degrees from the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Curious Affairs is her debut collection of short stories.
Myers, Mary Jane: CURIOUS AFFAIRS
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Myers, Mary Jane CURIOUS AFFAIRS Paul Dry Books (Adult Fiction) $16.95 3, 13 ISBN: 978-1-58988-150-1
Myers' debut features 13 stories of bizarre encounters and potential miracles.
Strange events befall the characters in this collection. They find a cursed stone from Maui, take advice from a talking lizard, meet a centuries-dead Austrian composer, and channel an ancient Greek poet. Many of the protagonists are lonely, deeply unhappy women who are all too eager to accept bits of magic into their lives. Diane in "The Maui Stone" is 42 when she begins dating a Jungian therapist who imposes his extreme New Age lifestyle on her. On a trip to Maui that he has insisted on, she finds the titular stone that changes her life. Barbara of "Sappho Resurgent" is also on vacation, an Aegean cruise with the beautiful sister she's felt estranged from for years. When Barbara begins chanting and translating what she intuits is ancient Greek, she is skeptical about this for only a moment. "This was not going to be easy to explain, even to herself...but these strange babblings somehow must be connected to that language, to that tradition of chanted poetry." Even when their susceptibility leads to tragedy, it is difficult to pity these women. They pass judgment on their own friends and relatives, who have "Elliptical-toned bodies" and who have had abortions, "a horrible, unforgivable sin." They observe a "homeless man, stinking of vomit" in a church pew before going on to meditate on "boundless compassion and mercy." Throughout, the narrative voice stays too close to the protagonists' perspectives to comment on their hypocrisy and, at times, even preaches its own questionable morality. There are several characters who have lost their prior religious connections, from Catholicism to cabala, and this is mentioned as if losing faith is at the root of unhappiness. Furthermore, when they reclaim it, religion offers overly simplistic solutions to their central conflicts.
A collection of mysterious encounters that fails to intrigue.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Myers, Mary Jane: CURIOUS AFFAIRS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461640/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3541793b. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461640