The Misfortune Of Marion Palm: A Novel
by Emily Culliton
Buy on AmazonA wildly entertaining debut about a Brooklyn Heights wife and mother who has embezzled a small fortune from her children's private school and makes a run for it, leaving behind her trust fund poet husband, his maybe-secret lover, her two daughters, and a school board who will do anything to find her. Marion Palm prefers not to think of herself as a thief but rather "a woman who embezzles." Over the years she has managed to steal $180,000 from her daughters' private school, money that has paid for European vacations, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, and perpetually unused state-of-the-art exercise equipment.…
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"Marion Palm is on the lam. She has a backpack full of money embezzled from the private school where she works. Left behind are her lazy husband and their two daughters, who begin to fray a bit around the edges (Nathan Palm becomes an obsessive lifestyle blogger). But Marion is finally free to do as she likes – even though she doesn’t really have a plan. Will she return to her life? Should she feel worse about escaping it? Do you empathize with her and her longing for financial and emotional freedom? Do you condemn or condone her abandoning her children? The Misfortune of Marion Palm is a fun caper, maybe especially because it’s hard to tell if you’re rooting for Marion Palm or against her."
NPR Books We Love — 2017 · apps.npr.org