Mary Walsh (1) (1952–)

As some other reviewers have stated, this is a difficult book to get into. Set in St. John's Newfoundland, Maureen has been raised in a dysfunctional home in which her father says little and her mother is an angry woman who takes it out on Maureen. In turn Maureen is a difficult student who on a school trip to Montreal for Expo 67 jumps ship and ends up sleeping with several men resulting in her becoming pregnant.

On her return to St. John's, she has the baby which her mother immediately sends out to be adopted. Maureen then moves in with an abusive boyfriend and her life becomes a real hell in which she becomes involved with local gangsters who are smuggling drugs from Jamaica.

I could not really care about any of these characters and just wanted the book finished. Walsh is a very funny woman when you see her on stage or TV but this book left me cold.… (meer)

Mary Walsh is a well-known actor and comedian. This is her first novel. It tells the story of Maureen, a young girl in Newfoundland who becomes pregnant at an early age, and proceeds to make a number of bad choices in her relationships with men, work and alcohol. We see how her mistakes follow her and how she is unable to make a new life for herself until she finds the inner strength to take control of her situation.

It's an interesting story, but the character development, while certainly not lacking, is not as strong as I'd like. Reading this story felt like I was watching it on TV....more focus on the "what" than on the "who" or the "why". A good read nonetheless!… (meer)

Maureen comes from a working class family in St John's, Newfoundland. She's a senior in a Catholic parochial high school.

Even though she can't sing she fakes her way into the school choir so she can travel as part of the group to Montreal and perform at Expo '67, the world's fair taking place there in 1967.

As soon as she arrives, her and a girlfriend go AWOL and hit the Montreal nightlife. Before you can say " G'wan with cha" she gets drunk and wakes up in a strange hotel room having lost her virginity as well as her girlfriend.

Evidently not big deal.

She goes back to the hotel, don't know that she ever performs at Expo, but the next night is out looking for her girlfriend in the same bars and has sex with another, more or less anonymous guy all the while not enjoying it one bit, which makes this reader wonder why she does it?

Not wanting to hang around with someone she hardly knows she ends up at yet another bar, gets dead drunk and has sex with an "old man".

Back home and back at Catholic school in St. John's she throws up on a nun's habit and is announced pregnant and kicked out of school. Her mother, the "Sarge" tells her she isn't going to sit around so she gets a part time job in a discount store where all the other employees hate her.

There's more, but none of it has any motivation, there's little character development - it is just one grim situation after another.

Why would a "good" girl attending a Catholic school, suddenly go on a sex and drinking binge just because she's away from home?
I never found out because I abandoned Crying for the Moon after three chapters. Blame it on a really unsympathetic character and an inability to suspend disbelief.

This is a good example of a "celebrity book". The publisher knows the author's fame in other endeavours, in this case Mary Walsh being somewhat of an comic icon in Canada, will sell enough books to make a profit.

Maybe stick to comedy, Mary, or was this book supposed to be a joke and I just didn't get it?… (meer)