Anais Nin
"This is a search for reality through a maze of illusions and fantasy and dreams, ultimately asserting in the words of Calderon: 'Life is a dream.'"


Kurt Vonnegut
"Marguerite Young is unquestionably a genius."


William Goyen, New York Times Book Review, 9/12/65
"A work of stunning magnitude and beauty. . . . The book's mysterious readability is effected through enchantment and hypnosis. Its force is cumulative; its method is amassment, as in the great styles of Joyce or Hermann Broch or Melville or Faulkner. . . . One of the most arresting literary achievements in our last 20 years. . . . It is a masterwork."


Lillian Smith, Chicago Tribune
"An extraordinary book by a woman possessed of a breathtaking verbal virtuosity. She also has quality of heart. . . . There are times when her pages surge and beat on the heart and imagination like great music; other times when it shimmers motionless like an ancient Hindu painting."


Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World, 3/21/93
"The prose is lyric, striking and memorable."


L.A. Reader, 2/93
This encyclopedic novel addresses the question of illusion, as Young--whose epic vision and exquisite prose are truly awesome--dissects the essence of reality and ruminates on where it can be found."


Belles Lettres, Winter 1993
"[A]n ambitious work of gorgeous fiction, written in wanes of lush, imagistic, even humorous language. . . . This is a work of genius."


Book Description
(volume one only) Young's classic massive novel


About the Author
A descendent of Brigham Young, Marguerite Young was born in Indiana in 1909 and moved to New York City in the 1940s. A respected literary figure and Greenwich Village eccentric, Young associated with writers from Richard Wright to Dylan Thomas to Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Thornton Wilder and Gertrude Stein. Besides her legendary and lengthy novel Miss Macintosh, My Darling (originally published in 1965), Young published two works of poetry, Prismatic Ground (1937) and Moderate Fable (1944); a work of nonfiction, Angel in the Forest (1945); and a collection of stories, essays and reviews, Inviting the Muses (1944), before her death in 1995. Her monumental biography of Eugene Debs, on which she worked for thirty years, will be published posthumously.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One of the most ambitious and remarkable literary achievements of the twentieth century, Miss Macintosh, My Darling might be called the Arabian Nights of American life. In prose that is poetic, incantatory, and extraordinarily rich, Marguerite Young takes us on a search for reality in a world of illusion and nightmare, touching on subjects as varied as drug addiction, women's suffrage, murder, suicide, pregnancy (both real and imagined), schizophrenia, love, gambling, and perfectionism. With precise detail, Young defines the characters in this phantasmagorical journey: Miss Macintosh herself, from What Cheer, Iowa, a seemingly forthright and normal woman with an incorruptible sense of humor and the desire to put an end to phantoms; the opium lady Catherine Cartwheel, a recluse who entertains imaginary guests in a great New England seaside house; the gentle Mr. Spitzer, a lawyer, composer and mystical space traveller who is wholly unsure of himself and of reality; his twin brother Peron, the raffish gambler and sports virtuoso; Cousin Hannah, the horsewoman, balloonist, mountain-climber and militant Boston feminist; Titus Bonebreaker of Chicago, a wildman of God dreaming of a heavenly crown; Mr. Weed of the Wabash River Valley, a very efficient Christian hangman; and many others. The masterwork of a genius, Miss Macintosh stands by itself as one of the greatest works of our time.

FROM THE CRITICS

Chicago Tribune

"An extraordinary book by a woman possessed of a breathtaking verbal virtuosity. She also has quality of heart. . . . There are times when her pages surge and beat on the heart and imagination like great music; other times when it shimmers motionless like an ancient Hindu painting."

Washington Post

"The prose is lyric, striking and memorable."

New York Times Book Review

"A work of stunning magnitude and beauty. . . . The book's mysterious readability is effected through enchantment and hypnosis. Its force is cumulative; its method is amassment, as in the great styles of Joyce or Hermann Broch or Melville or Faulkner. . . . One of the most arresting literary achievements in our last 20 years. . . . It is a masterwork."

Los Angeles Reader

This encyclopedic novel addresses the question of illusion, as Young--whose epic vision and exquisite prose are truly awesome--dissects the essence of reality and ruminates on where it can be found."

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Marguerite Young is unquestionably a genius.Kurt Vonnegut — Kurt Vonnegut