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

Voltaire's biographer said of him, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Now Meg Rosoff says the same of Sharon Dogar, after the Sunday Times accused Dogar's novel Annexed of "sexing up" Anne Frank. Having been similarly accused of "sexing up" John Donne in my novel Conceit, I would agree that Dogar has the right to do as she wishes. Isn't that why book designers, nowadays, put "a novel" after the title on the cover--a warning to readers that it is, after all, fiction? As Oscar Wilde said, novels are either well written or badly written. That's all.

~ 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