Rating: 
Summary: Full Range Fiona
Review: Mary McGarry Morris evinces striking skill at creating the vivid character of Fiona Range. Fiona is hard to admire, but engages interest by her rebel attitude and behavior. She is someone the apparently respectable people of small town Dearborn near Boston, shun and label as trouble.Some of her bad behavior is not exactly of her making. By book's end, readers gain some sympathy for her. She steps into the book in the worst light. From a drunken state where she is beyond knowing what she is doing, she wakens hungover in her own bed -- but with a hairy arm wrapped around her that could belong to any male from this small depressing town. Although she never misses a day, she is late for work, as a waitress in Chester and Maxine's coffee shop. Thirty-year-old Fiona arrives with a throbbing temple, her hair looking possibly as though cut, dried and fried, her good looks on vacation. Maxine is Chester's wife, her attempts at waitressing are hilarious. She would make Guinness Book of Records for average number of plates dropped per shift. Life for Fiona sinks further until she determines to restore it. It would help if she could identify her father. Many point to Patrick Grady, a local dysfunctional war veteran. She harasses him but he refuses to talk to her. Her mother disappeared years ago. Brought up by a family presided over by Judge Hollis, Fiona became persona non grata because of bad behavior, and they evicted her. Fiona likes to speak truth. It is not always what people want to hear, gossip is more their style. Small communities have a reputation of everyone knowing everyone else's business. Like Peyton Place, Dearborn also houses dangerous secrets. These explode in final chapters that solve a long standing mysterious disappearance and create an exciting and surprising denouement for all that has occurred.
Rating: 
Summary: Dark drama that , though good, could have been better
Review: FIONA RANGE wonders if nature is more powerful than nurture. Thirty years ago her irresponsible unwed mother abandoned Fiona as an infant. In Dearborn, Massachusetts, her conservative aunt and uncle raised Fiona to behave properly. Fiona's love life is one disaster after another as she always ends up with a loser. When her "perfect" cousin Elizabeth, accompanied by her fiancé arrives in town, Fiona, acting par for the course, ends up sleeping with the fiancé and her cousin's former local boy friend. Her efforts to get closer to Patrick Grady, rumored to be her father, flops even worse although Fiona defies her uncle's warning about this person he gives hush money to keep quiet. Fiona knows she needs to reclaim her life, but each step she takes is closer to the abyss. FIONA RANGE is an exciting psychological character study that will remind readers of LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR. The cast is clearly defined, which enables the audience to fully understand the conflicting emotions that eat away at Fiona's self respect. The story line is filled with tension that builds up to a fine climax as readers wonder what will Fiona do next to cause herself even deeper hurt. However, at the same time, the constant repetitiveness of Fiona's self destruction costs her any empathy. Though superbly drawn, part of the story line feels like filler. Still, Mary McGarry Morris packs quite an emotional wallop in a story that goes deep into the inner gut of a person knowingly traveling down a path that can only end in tragedy. Fans of relationship dramas will relish this distressing, well-written tale. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: take a pass
Review: I found this book SO exasperating. Fiona is totally unsympathetic. Within a single paragraph, she thinks she's being dismissed by her family, then she likes them, then her feelings are hurt by some perceived slight, and on and on it goes. I thought it was carelessly written; it felt very lazy to me - it could have done with serious editing. Plus, I couldn't shake the feeling that the book was set in the 40s or 50s, which is fine, if the book REALLY were set in those decades; I had to keep reminding myself this was supposedly set in the current day. I finished the book because I just had to see if it was going to be ludicrous to the very end, and it was. Even the "happy ending" was apathetic and tacked-on. I've liked the author's other books, so I was most disappointed when I finally got my hands on this one. I did finish it, but I sure won't be passing it on to my friends!
Rating: 
Summary: Five-plus, from a grateful, diehard fan...
Review: I'm one of those people who dislikes re-reading books, or seeing a movie more than once. I'm a novelist myself (unpublished, but hopeful), and I like to gulp as much fiction and media as I can, but rarely go back over old ground. The only movie I watch over and over is the Coen Brothers' "Miller's Crossing" and the only books I seem able to re-read are those by Mary McGarry Morris. For one thing, each time I re-visit one of her novels, I find there are new layers of meaning I missed the first, and even the second time. For example, the first time I read Fiona Range, I, like some of the others who have reviewed it here, found it to be less tragic and moving than her other books, "A Dangerous Woman," "Vanished" (my favorite; it should have won the Pulitzer) and "Songs In Ordinary Time." However, I am currently re-reading it now and, contrary to what I thought was going to happen (I knew the ending, so how could it be surprising and interesting?) it has turned out to be even better BECAUSE I know the ending. Now it truly does seem tragic, a magnificent character study of a Woman Interrupted...a woman whose whole life revolves around the black hole of lost identity, a giant lie perpetuated by those who pretend to have cared for her. It's a about monstrous hypocrisy and what happens to people when they are kept from essential knowledge about themselves. It's about cruelty that drives people to self-destruct. Damn, it's good. After Faulkner and Joyce, Mary McGarry Morris has had the most significant effect on my writing. Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Ford, Russell Barnes ("Affliction"), Alice McDermott, Annie Prioux, Stephen King, Toni Morrison...they are all to be studied, and I owe them so much. But Mary is the greatest writer in America today. As another reviewer here noted, her characters are fresh, real, surprising, devoid of stereotype, human to the bone. No one writes them living and breathing as she does. With their many flaws and their heartaches, their jerkiness, their addictions, their violence and their cuteness, they are truly unforgettable. The old expression, "To know her, is to love her," is what makes these books keepers. Thanks, Mary, for the gifts.
Rating:
Summary: My Nutty Friend Fiona
Review: For some reason, I was completely taken with this book. I hate sappy, romantic stories or ones that have overly depressing endings. As a 30 year old like Fiona (though married), I really connected to this character. Fiona is more like a beloved old friend who keeps doing things that really tick me off. Her actions often seem completely rash from the reader's perspective. However, having made irrational, highly emotional choices myself (what woman hasn't?), I find Fiona Range to be the only book I've ever read with a main character that could easily be someone I know or, to some extent, me. And, the best part, the author presents her story without judging Fiona. The reader is allowed to do that herself. I am still recommending this to my friends. I really enjoyed it!
Rating: 
Summary: A Grating American Novel
Review: I really hoped to enjoy this book. The initial introduction to Fiona, is risque, yet pathetic. She wakes up one morning to find herself in bed, hungover from a party the evening before, with an aquaintence, whose wife was in the hospital, recovering from childbirth. And it only gets worse from there..All the male charecters are seen as Fionas' victims. From her employer to her family, they all complain of being victims to her selfishness. I couldnt sympathize at all with her. Her worst charecter in this book is the cruel and crazy Patrick Grady, who is believed to be Fiona's illigitamate father. She relentlessly persues a relationship with this terrible man because she wants to be his daughter. The author paints a one sided picture of him...never really showing any warmth or humane personality traits. It made Fiona seem even more unreal, to chase after him so relentlessly. The other charecter who was so irritating was her cousin Elizabeth. She is whiny, spineless and weak. I had wondered how she attracted so much love and attention from the other people in this book. I have to say the only reason I finished this book was that I was on a 4 hour bus trip, and it was more interesting then the scenery. On a more positive note, this book was mildly entertaining, and an easy read. It seemed like more of a soap opera plot then a book with a lot of substance, which can sometimes be fun.
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