Interesting story idea and I have to admit I was intrigued along the way and wanted to know the ending but I was overall underwhelmed by the characters and the story arc.

A fun story with great characters. Not sure if this is the final cover, but the cover is very unappealing and does not do the book justice.

With The Misfortune of Marion Palm, author Emily Culliton presents us with a dilemma.

From the beginning, we can take an accurate guess at the gist of the plot, the opening line “Marion Palm is on the lam,” providing a clear enough clue. But the details of Marion’s decision to abscond her life, her daughters, and her husband are still a mystery.

What do we know about Marion? We know that she has embezzled $180.000 from the upscale private school her daughters attend. We know that she has paid for family vacations, a much loved sub-zero refrigerator, and home renovations with that money. We also know that Marion’s husband Nathan is the heir to a trust fund that has gone bone-dry, a fact that he seems to completely ignore, but one that Marion is all too aware of. Needless to say, any respect she may have felt for her husband has long since withered.

More ambiguous perhaps are Marion’s feelings regarding her two daughters, Ginny and Jane. While on the run with the money she’s carefully and cunningly stolen, she confesses to missing them, but then turns right around and muses that those feelings will undoubtedly go away. In one scene, Marion decides to change the color of her hair, lest should someone she knows recognize her. She looks around the hair salon, thinking she judges all these women she doesn’t know as much as they are in that moment judging her, women from a different social class to the one she’s used to. Marion suddenly reflects upon a moment from her past:

“She remembers when her mother stopped liking her. It happened one evening at dinner when Marion was sixteen; her mother passed her the potatoes and wished Marion would just go away.” Marion comes to the conclusion that someday perhaps she would look at one of her daughters in the same way, and seems comforted by the fact that has spared them the fate of being recipients to her loathing.

Culliton presents the story from several points of view, including Marion, Nathan, and their two daughters. But there is also the voice of the policeman in charge of Marion’s case, the school’s Board of Trustees, and Nathan’s off-again-on-again girlfriend Denise. Multiple POVs can at times be blatantly obnoxious, but here they help to add substance to an otherwise cut-and-dried case of a runaway housewife.

Marion Palm’s vanishing act affects everyone she knows, and the fact that it’s not limited to her direct family makes the novel more complex in its structure. It’s in truth less a tragedy than it is a comedy, beginning with Marion’s different thoughts of where she should hide, and finally deciding on staying close to her Brooklyn neighborhood. Nathan starts a blog about his wife’s disappearance, which feeds beautifully into his narcissistic persona. Both of Marion’s daughters unravel in different ways, but share a common trait in shedding their childhood vulnerability, and in doing so, becoming a bit more like their mother.

Marion herself is an enigma, and the ending doesn’t really give any answers to the puzzle that is her mind. We hear Marion’s voice telling her story, but we don’t quite trust that she’s being completely honest with us. Her modus operandis also appears a bit flawed regardless of what she has managed to get away with, when she takes up employment as a cleaning woman for a rich Russian family (which unbeknown to Marion are in reality Russian mobsters) and impulsively decides to funnel money from the teenage daughter’s account into her own. But soon we learn that this particular theft is more of a challenge than precipitous action on Marion’s part; she has taught herself Russian to steal the teenager’s passwords for the accounts, and tells herself that she does it “because she can.”

Whether stealing from the Russian mob will prove Marion’s downfall or conversely, result in her ultimate triumph remains to be seen. In the meantime, her family becomes less of a reality for her, and more part of a strange dream. Something that perhaps is based on a reality of some sort, but certainly not Marion’s reality. Not anymore.

If readers are looking for an explanation of Marion’s decision to run out on her family, especially her daughters, Culliton doesn’t actually provide one. We are privy to the knowledge that motherhood is something Marion never really wanted, but was part of the package to a lifestyle she craved. Now in possession of money that allows her the freedom to be who she really is, Marion no longer feels the need to sustain something which she has never been. In addition, the novel’s name is seemingly a misnomer, since the only misfortune of Marion Palm is apparently her unwillingness to continue living a life that she doesn’t want to live.

Some reviews have compared The Misfortune of Marion Palm to Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go Bernadette, that also tells the story of a runaway wife and mother. But in truth, Marion and Bernadette are not very much alike. If she is to be equaled to another fictional character, it would serve better a comparison to Marion Crane, Hitchcock’s anti-heroine in the film Psycho. Let us remember that Marion Crane also steals a large sum of money from her employer and flees with it, intending to make a life with her boyfriend, but unfortunately runs into Norman Bates instead.

Although Marion Palm steals the money only for herself and a new life without past ties, we can’t help but wonder if she’ll someday have the misfortune of encountering a Norman Bates all of her own. In the meantime, Emily Culliton’s unapologetic protagonist is someone we can’t help but condemn and cheer on in equal measure, her lack of guilt and second thoughts a somewhat refreshing form of honesty.

I loved the first chapter, but steadily became less interested in all of the characters until I put the book down. Marion and her husband both seemed awful and I didn't care if they ever got their happy ending.

I was so looking forward to reading this book. I wanted to enjoy. I found this book to be just ok. The concept had potential but I just felt like something was lacking.The story is about a husband and wife that are not likeable characters.For reasons of her own, she embezzles money from her daughter's school. She encounters mishaps along the way that made me shake me head and wonder why she didnt take a different approach to her mishaps. She goes on the run and still does things that are not good and gets herself in major jams. The ending to me left a lot to be desired. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

Marion Palm embezzled money from her daughters' school and fled. She's a character who won't win many fans, but whom readers will follow with fascination as she cuts ties with her life and goes on the run. The reader is privy to the family detritus she leaves, and the subtle acknowledgement that things aren't always what they seem..

This quirky, fast-paced and, at times, hilarious first novel from Emily Culliton is one of my favourites of 2017. Not one of the characters has enough redeeming qualities to be likeable and yet you will find yourself rooting for Marion, her husband and even the Russians (don't ask!) anyway. I would venture to say that most married woman with children will relate, on some level, to Marion Palm: "Was his wife unhappy? How was she unhappy? Was it work? Was it the kids? Was it him? All three, Nathan told the detective. Both Nathan and the school undervalued her. Both expected her to ... calm others' anxieties, whims and manias and this meant that she could never have any of her own". Marion has been embezzling funds from her part-time bookkeeping job for years. When her employer announces that they are being audited, Marion decides to go into hiding - from her family, her job and her friends. Culliton's writing is similar to Joseph Heller's in Catch-22. The story is outlandish, outrageous and hilarious and Culliton is an expert at satirical writing. I challenge you not to laugh out loud while, at the same time, realizing that, yes, every character in The Misfortune of Marion Palm is someone you've encountered in your own life. And that is what makes this comedic look at modern family life so relatable.

This book was more style over substance. The shifting perspectives and present tense are interesting choices, but the story itself fell flat. Marion only got interesting in the last 1/3 of the book; everyone else felt like cardboard cut-outs.

I did not particularly enjoy this quirky novel. The writing lacked description or depth, unfolding the story in a choppy, unimaginative manner.

Over the years, Marion Palm embezzled money from the private school her children attended and she worked for part-time. And then she left. A bizarre, poorly planned exit, leaving behind her family to become increasingly odd. Every character in the novel seemed to be mildly apathetic and unusual. The plot moved great distances in short, tight chapters.

Unfortunately I'd recommend giving this one a pass.

This novel has a barely believable plot but it is entertaining. The characters are not well-defined and Marion's hiding in plain sight is off the mark. Okay for the beach, I guess ,but not very up-lifting, especially the ending.

Emily Culliton's The Misfortune of Marion Palm is witty and fun, and it's a great summer book. At first I was a bit reluctant to embrace the tiny, brisk chapters because the style seemed too much like an "easy reader," but soon I was charmed by how quickly the storytelling moved and by how smooth and good the writing style is. By the end, I was completely won over by the arc of the book. I think it will make an excellent audiobook, too, especially with a good narrator, and I can't wait to see the movie that I hope will be made from it soon.

It is odd that Marion Palm's author Emily Culiton, has created a novel without a single likable character. The story centers around Marion Palm and her decision to disappear after embezzling almost $200,000 from her child's school.

She leaves her 2 young daughters and her inept, self-centered husband, carrying $40,000 in a backpack and decamps to a distant land, the other side of Brooklyn. I found nothing sympathetic about her. Personally I felt she was the opposite of a woman of power, rather a lazy, slothful person, always seeking the easy way out.

Of course, child abandonment is not a characteristic that anyone can admire, but this was done for no reason, just the thoughtless piling up of crimes that had finally come to a head. Marion is a compulsive cheat and criminal who soon sets out on another crime of opportunity when she gets involved stealing, cleverly, from the Russian billionaires she is working for.

Despite the ruin she has left for her family, she is taken by the Russians to Moscow to be employed in continued chicanery and theft. Awfully unlikely, absurd and unsatisfyiing as an ending. So, here is a book with no satisfying ending, no realistic understanding of motivation of Marion except that sloth pays, so why struggle?

Sorry, but this book left me cold, shaking my head.

When a book makes you laugh out loud, cry quietly and go inward at the same time, you know you're on to something. I can't wait for more from Ms. Culliton. Marion Palm is a wonder.