I'm Mary Novik--welcome to my website! In About Mary, I talk about what inspired me to write my debut novel Conceit, and in About Conceit, you'll find highlights from reviews, a book club guide, readers' comments, and an excerpt. Check back for updates to the Blog and News & Events, and share the 17th-century discoveries I post in Backgrounds. I'd love to hear from you via my Contact page.

Blog

Most of the time editors toil in their offices, reading manuscripts and struggling to make silk purses out of sows' ears. Thoughtful authors remember to thank them (not nearly as often or as unstintingly as they should) in the acknowledgements at the end of their books. And once in a while these backstage heroes make dramatic appearances on stage, as my Doubleday editor Nita Pronovost has just done to promote one of her authors. Here's Nita's blog about it: "In one of the stranger moments in my publishing career, a few weeks ago I found myself in a morgue with one of my authors . . .

~ Open the blog


Conceit

Conceit is a plenteous, fully engaging re-creation of 17th-century England, observed through the eyes of poet John Donne's daughter, Pegge. Mary Novik's imagination leaps from ecstatic to hellish, probing the carnal, the mortal and the mystical in fascinating counterpoint. The story opens with the great London fire of 1666, expands through decades, then revisits the charred ruins for an apotheosis of the macabre. --Globe & Mail

Backgrounds Unlike Shakespeare, whose portraits are always being discredited, we have no doubt what John Donne looked like at various stages of his life since he was fond of having his image captured. He had himself etched, sketched, engraved, miniaturized, painted in flamboyant costumes, and even carved in marble for his great effigy in St Paul's cathedral in London. ~ Explore backgrounds