Background
Martin, Valerie Metcalf was born on March 14, 1948 in Sedalia, Missouri, United States. Daughter of John Roger and Valerie (Fleischer) Metcalf.
(Valerie Martin's third novel is the story of a deadly lov...)
Valerie Martin's third novel is the story of a deadly love triangle set in New Orleans. Emma Miller, married and the mother of a five-year-old daughter, is obsessed by her increasingly sadomasochistic relationship with Pascal Toussaint, who is himself fixated upon Clarire D'Anjou, a young novice with a passion for God so powerful that she has been sent home to New Orleans by the convent for a year's test of her vocation. In a city overrun by rats and awash in a mysterious plague, freedom and the consuming desire for self-sacrifice are pursued to harrowing, ultimately redemptive consequence. New Orleans--alluring, pleasure-loving, mesmerizing--remains both a force in its own right and a backdrop to the erotic contests at the center of the novel that established Martin as a major American voice.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807127418/?tag=2022091-20
(In this vital and heartbreaking collection of stories, Va...)
In this vital and heartbreaking collection of stories, Valerie Martin, the bestselling author of Mary Reilly and the internationally acclaimed Property, turns an unflinching eye upon artists—driven and blocked, desired and detested, infamous and sublime, as they struggle beneath the tyranny of Art to reconcile their audience with their muse. A painter who owes his small success to a man he despises, discovers that his passivity has cost him the love that might have set him free. A writer of modest talents encounters the old love who once betrayed him; now she repels him, yet the unfinished novel she leaves in his hands may surpass anything he could ever produce himself. An American poet in Rome finds herself forced to choose between her lover and a world so alien it takes her voice away. A print maker, who has reached a certain age, enters so deeply into the magical world of her imagination that she can never find her way back. In captivating, luminous prose, Martin explores the trials and rewards of human relationships and creative endeavor with all the ease and insight of a writer at the top of her form.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400095506/?tag=2022091-20
(The startling arrival of Valerie Martin's first novel bro...)
The startling arrival of Valerie Martin's first novel brought rave reviews and sounded the themes that would inform such later major works as MARY REILLY, THE GREAT DIVORCE, and SALVATION: the fragility of the physical world, the gritty details of employment, and the possibilities, however slim, of transformation and liberty. Helene Thatcher, the young woman narrator of SET IN MOTION, works--not at the academic post to which she once aspired, but in the welfare offices of the city of New Orleans, a world of bureaucratic forms, files, bad air-conditioning, and departmental regulations. The chaos and despair that rile the lives of the people Helene serves are mirrored in her own life on the trendier side of town. Her lovers are given to casual violence and drugs; a friend toys, seductively, with sanity. Detached, erotic, Helene is a young heroine who is coping, barely.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807127353/?tag=2022091-20
(From the Orange Prize-winning author of Property and Ital...)
From the Orange Prize-winning author of Property and Italian Fever Set in New Orleans, this is a novel about a love triangle. Married mother, Emma Miller, is bored with her husband, her job and her life so she begins a passionate, often violent, affair with Pascal Toussaint, a sadist with whom she becomes obsessed. Pascal, in the meantime, is fixated on a young novice called Claire D'anjou. Claire seems rather cold, is devout to an extreme, and is prone to visions. Pascal's father describes her as 'not satisfied with being only mortal'. Emma endures the same sort of self-effacement in her relationship with Paul as Claire does in her struggle towards religious purity. This is all set against the backdrop of a city overrun by rats and awash with a mysterious plague.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0753820420/?tag=2022091-20
(From the acclaimed author of the bestselling Italian Feve...)
From the acclaimed author of the bestselling Italian Fever comes a fresh twist on the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, a novel told from the perspective of Mary Reilly, Dr. Jekyll's dutiful and intelligent housemaid. Faithfully weaving in details from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, Martin introduces an original and captivating character: Mary is a survivor–scarred but still strong–familiar with evil, yet brimming with devotion and love. As a bond grows between Mary and her tortured employer, she is sent on errands to unsavory districts of London and entrusted with secrets she would rather not know. Unable to confront her hideous suspicions about Dr. Jekyll, Mary ultimately proves the lengths to which she'll go to protect him. Through her astute reflections, we hear the rest of the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, and this familiar tale is made more terrifying than we remember it, more complex than we imagined possible.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375725997/?tag=2022091-20
Martin, Valerie Metcalf was born on March 14, 1948 in Sedalia, Missouri, United States. Daughter of John Roger and Valerie (Fleischer) Metcalf.
She graduated from the Master of Fine Arts Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
In 2012, The Observer named Property as one of "The 10 best historical novels". She has also taught at Mount Holyoke College, Loyola University New Orleans, The University of New Orleans, The University of Alabama, and Sarah Lawrence College, among other institutions. Her other fictional works include,,, The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories (1988),,,,, and The Confessions of Edward Day (2009), as well as, a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Her most recent novel, The Ghost of the Mary Celeste, was published in January 2014.
lieutenant is directed by Stephen Frears and stars John Malkovich as Doctor Jekyll and Julia Roberts as Mary. The short subject film Surface Calm (2001) is based on her short story of the same title from her first book, Love (1977).
She has one child, Adrienne, born in 1975.
(In this vital and heartbreaking collection of stories, Va...)
(The startling arrival of Valerie Martin's first novel bro...)
(From the acclaimed author of the bestselling Italian Feve...)
(From the Orange Prize-winning author of Property and Ital...)
(Valerie Martin’s Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing ...)
(Helene Thatcher, a social worker who helps the hungry and...)
(Valerie Martin's third novel is the story of a deadly lov...)
(Book by Martin, Valerie)
Her 1990 novel, Mary Reilly, a retelling of The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the point of view of a servant in the doctor"s house, was released in 1996 as the Columbia TriStar Pictures film, Mary Reilly.
Member Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Academy American Poets, Associate Writing Programs.
Married Robert Martin, December 10, 1970 (divorced).