Marjorie Morningstar

By: Herman Wouk

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

Length: 28 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Marjorie Morningstar is a love story. It presents one of the greatest characters in modern fiction: Marjorie, the pretty 17-year-old who left the respectability of New York's Central Park West to join the theater, live in the teeming streets of Greenwich Village, and seek love in the arms of a brilliant, enigmatic writer. In this memorable novel, Herman Wouk, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has created a story as universal, as sensitive, and as unmistakably authentic as any ever told.

Check out two of the best reviewed titles and biggest customer favorites in our store, Wouk's The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

©1955 Herman Wouk (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar is timeless.... Gabra Zackman has a sweet, warm voice, which she mixes with a seriousness that complements Wouk's prose and dialogue. Zackman's ability to change tone, from high-pitched to deep and feminine to breathless, brings the book and its personalities to life.... With Zackman at the mike, every chapter brings a new reason to continue." (AudioFile)

Loooooong, but a classic with great narration.

struggled to stay with this 30 hour audible. Thank goodness for the amazing narrator.

Great story with really cheesy narration

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I adore this book and have read it several times. I have waited for years for this book to come out on audio. I was so disappointed by the quality of the narration. I felt that the narrator had very little interest in the story and was quick to stereotype the various ethnic characters. You'd think that when a story has such a rich diversity of ethnic characters the producers would have found a narrator who could actually pull-off accents and/or dialects. Her German characters sound Irish and she turns the "slight drawl" of Sandy Goldstone into something that sounds Texan, and all of the Jewish adults sound like Shecky Green. Although this is a book about New York and New Yorkers the narrator sounded Midwestern most of the book except when she was mangling dialects/accents of ethnic characters.

A good listen

If you could sum up Marjorie Morningstar in three words, what would they be?

I liked it it was a good listen

What other book might you compare Marjorie Morningstar to and why?

None that I have listened to

What about Gabra Zackman’s performance did you like?

Very good

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Nothing ened like I thought it would.

Any additional comments?

I thought it was going to be more about her life on broadway.

A well read Story that grows on you and then continues to surprise.

Having been a well read teenager in the 1960s, I thought I had read most of the key novels of the preceding 20 years. But I had missed this one, and now find out my wife also missed it. So we plunged in, listening only just before bedtime as is our habit. And after what we thought was a relatively slow start, the book caught our attention and then captivated us, keeping us on edge for the rest of the book. Every time we thought we could guess the rest of the plot, we found out we were wrong. And we enjoyed the reader’s character voices and sense of timing more and more as the book went on. We began to listen more and more during the daytime as we approach the last third of the book. We’re definitely sorry when it ended, and took to discussing it I’m looking for critical essays just to keep it alive for a little while longer. I strongly recommend this novel.

Endurance

If you have the endurance to slosh through the 30 some hours, the story is compelling. The literary style of he said, she said very annoying but given that criticism mostly an interesting tale.

An excellent storyteller

I am sort of a sucker for anything by Herman Wouk. As an aficionado of his WWII books, I expected this one (when I first read it a million years ago) to be too girlish for me; and it is certainly more soap-opera-like than the war books; but I think it is better than that implies. Wouk is attempting to get inside the mind of a mid-20th-century American as a way of exploring some big ideas. He is particularly concerned with the place of traditional moral values in a modern setting. His conclusions are seen by many as being bourgeois or reactionary, but I think that is going too far. He certainly favors traditional morality as a way to get through life, but he doesn't do it in the snide, condemnatory way that so many right-wingers use today. Bestselling novels just don't engage the kind of ideas that are in this book anymore.

And as a child of the rural midwest, this book was one I used to live vicariously in New York in its golden years. It is so evocative of a different era! And the characters are pretty well-drawn. Noel is exactly right as the seemingly super-accomplished yet really inadequate "genius" type; and Marjorie herself is an unusual heroine. I usually half fall in love with the heroines in Dickens or Trollope of whoever. Marjorie remained interesting and attractive without ever being the embodiment of perfection we usually get with such females.

The narration could have been better -- someone with a bit more sophistication and sureness -- and who could pronounce things a bit better -- would have been good. But well worth a listen, overall.

An old favorite of mine revisited

I first read this when I was a young teen and was thrilled to find it on Audible. Not quite as good as I remembered it but still very good coming of age story

nostalgic 40's love story

Would you listen to Marjorie Morningstar again? Why?

This brought back memories of yesteryear. I will definitely read it again and pass it on to my daughter to read.

What did you like best about this story?

The poignant description of the 40's and 50's mores and values of American women and the way they handled the conflicts of their religious beliefs to the developing American culture.

Which character – as performed by Gabra Zackman – was your favorite?

Marjorie, and I thought Gabra did an excellent job with all the characters.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

YES

Any additional comments?

Once started this book was very difficult to put down. The male characters in this novel had many profound observations about our culture and human nature. Herman Wouk had us all figured out.

A walk down memory lane

Any additional comments?

This was one of my favorite books in adolescence. Hearing it on audio was fascinating--I never realized how much I missed in visual print. Though the story and values are timeworn, the nostalgia made it worth the listen. I almost did not buy this title, as someone had mentioned that a chapter at the end is missing--IT IS NOT. The entire book was presented, including the wrap-up chapter (Wally's epilogue, so to speak). I agree with other presenters that the narrator did a hit or miss job--mostly ok, but her "New York Jewish" accents left much to be desired. I have no idea what she was going for, but she did not approximate anything remotely familiar with them It was a bit distracting, but not enough to ruin the book for me. All in all, this was a wonderful listen.

Thoroughly Enjoyed!

Would you consider the audio edition of Marjorie Morningstar to be better than the print version?

Definitely!. I recognized the characters immediately. I ‘knew’ them. They were family members, classmates, coworkers, people I grew up with. Their backgrounds and the setting may be different, but the people were all the same. Even though I personally know little about York City and the Theatre life, the story could be played out in any setting. The characters and the story are timeless.

Any additional comments?

Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. There were bits here and there that bogged it down a bit. The ‘philosophizing’ would sometimes drag out a bit longer than I thought necessary. Some dialog was a bit ‘wordy’. But they were more tolerable when listening to the audio version. I probably skimmed and skipped through a lot of that when I read the hardcover book 35 or so years ago.

Gabra Zackman did an excellent job with the performance. There were times, particularly at the beginning, when the men’s voices were a bit flat. But she either got better at reading their parts as the story progressed, or I got better at hearing it the way I thought it should be.

I first read Marjorie Morningstar when I was in high school. I still remember clearly discovering the book on the shelf, flipping through the pages, reading a bit here and there, and taking it to the counter to check it out, writing my name on the card to be filed away and the librarian stamping the return date on the slip of paper glued to the inside front cover. I read a lot of books then – two or three books a week for weeks and weeks at a time for the years I was in junior high and high school. Many of the books have long been forgotten. But Marjorie Morningstar stood out. When I saw it was available on audio book, I got excited and immediately downloaded it.

I had forgotten a lot of the details of the book. I think reading it as a 15 to 17 year old, I had a different understanding of the characters and the plot. The parts of the book, the message of the story, were different when read as a teen. Just as Marjorie’s point of view changed, so has mine.

I am now looking forward to reading/listening to more of Herman Wouk’s work. I think that might be the best reveiw/recommendation a book can have.