9780062988669
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Maggie-Now audiobook

  • By: Betty Smith
  • Narrator: Nicola Barber
  • Category: Fiction, Literary
  • Length: 13 hours 23 minutes
  • Publisher: Caedmon
  • Publish date: May 05, 2020
  • Language: English
  • (1748 ratings)
(1748 ratings)
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Maggie-Now Audiobook Summary

Betty Smith, the beloved author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, weaves a riveting modern myth out of the experiences of her own life in this rediscovered classic.

In Brooklyn’s unforgiving urban jungle, Maggie Moore is torn between answering her own needs and catering to the desirous men who dominate her life. Confronted by her quarrelsome Irish immigrant father, the feckless lover who may become her husband, and others, Maggie must learn to navigate a cycle of loss, separation, and hope as she forges her own path toward happiness.

With characteristic warmth, compelling insight, and easy, conversational prose, Maggie-Now poignantly illuminates one woman’s struggles and successes as she grapples with timeless questions of desire, duty, self-sacrifice, and the quest for fulfillment. Maggie-Now is an unforgettable masterpiece from one of the twentieth century’s greatest talents.

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Maggie-Now Audiobook Narrator

Nicola Barber is the narrator of Maggie-Now audiobook that was written by Betty Smith

Betty Smith (1896-1972) was a native of Brooklyn, New York. Her novels A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Tomorrow Will Be Better, Joy in the Morning, and Maggie-Now continue to capture the hearts and imaginations of millions of readers worldwide.

About the Author(s) of Maggie-Now

Betty Smith is the author of Maggie-Now

Maggie-Now Full Details

Narrator Nicola Barber
Length 13 hours 23 minutes
Author Betty Smith
Category
Publisher Caedmon
Release date May 05, 2020
ISBN 9780062988669

Subjects

The publisher of the Maggie-Now is Caedmon. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Fiction, Literary

Additional info

The publisher of the Maggie-Now is Caedmon. The imprint is Caedmon. It is supplied by Caedmon. The ISBN-13 is 9780062988669.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Lucy

February 20, 2008

A recent review of, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by one of my goodreads friends sent me to recalling all the Betty Smith books that I loved over the years. a tree is probably her most famous, having been made into movies and since it is so young adult friendly. But Maggie Now was my favorite because of it's moody mysterious romance between a proper Irish woman and a "man with a past". Maggie's husband leaves her every year to search for some missing key to his life and his impetus is a breeze.A common thread that runs through Smith's stories is women and their often unreasoning loyalty to the men in their lives. Maggie accepts Claude's absences and welcomes him home again just like the tired, hard-working mother in A Tree remains loyal to her drunken husband.

Peyton

June 05, 2012

This was a great vacation read. I am a HUGE Betty Smith fan; A Tree Grows In Brooklyn is probably my favorite book and this does not disappoint. That being said, this book is very similar in setting and tone...almost too similar. I enjoyed it and once I finished it, found myself feeling as I do with any book I love: a little lost and curious as to what I should do with my time. Always a sign of a good read!

Bonnie

January 14, 2022

This novel by the iconic author of 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' takes the reader on an emotional ride covering family, intimate, and other relationships.Maggie-Now is a spirited and loving girl who grows up taking responsibility for a cold and distant father. When she finds love, it is with a man who, in some sense, replicates her father's traits. He travels a lot, is home rarely, and keeps secrets from Maggie. Maggie desperately wants a child but is unable to conceive and not permitted to adopt. She finds sustenance in foster care and waiting for her husband to return home while taking care of the foster children in her keep.Because this novel takes place in the 1920's in Brooklyn, NY, it brought back memories of my growing up in NYC. I remember the horse drawn food carriers, the cobbled streets, the 'old' days without technology when kids were content to play marbles or ball in the streets.As Maggie tries to learn how to put herself first and not in the shadow of the men in her life, we take this journey with her through all her ups and downs. Maggie, in a sense, foreshadows what the woman's movement will become in time.

Anne

May 03, 2011

This was a lovely book. It centered, as usual, around a strong, intelligent female protagonist, but it was definitely a little different from the other Betty Smith books (of which, by the way, I can't help wishing there were many more!). Maggie-Now reminds me of how Katie Nolan might have been if she had had more money and if she hadn't gotten married. She takes care of everyone--her father, Patsy (who is just an appalling creature, really), her brother, Denny (who becomes a butcher because he thinks it's cool!), all of her foster children (interesting and refreshing, a heroine who can't have children), and her husband, Claude. Claude is just bizarre--not from Brooklyn, clearly, highly educated, no family, no idea, really, where he comes from, and he does like Vianne in Chocolat and Mary Poppins and leaves when he feels the pull of the wind. I thought that was just a hair farfetched, actually, but I still liked him as a character. I hope Maggie-Now gets to be happy in the future--Betty Smith always does end her books with lots of loose ends. I'm always thinking and hoping about the fate of the main characters when I close the book.

Judy

November 23, 2021

This is the third of four novels written by Betty Smith. Her first was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which I have read several times and which inspired me to try to read the entire fiction section of my local library---not that I have yet accomplished it. I have now read all four novels.Maggie-Now was named because of her mother's exasperated way of calling Maggie to stop being so energetic and start doing what she was supposed to. "Maggie, now stop that. Maggie, now do this." Plus many nationalities hang nicknames on their children.When Maggie-Now's mother died in childbirth, Maggie at 13 years old became the one to raise her brother. The father, a disgruntled Irish immigrant, needed caring for as well.Reading it in the 21st century, a good 100 years later, it worked as historical fiction. Life in a Brooklyn neighborhood filled with immigrants from many countries runs through WWI, the depression and the beginning gentrification of the area as it was subsumed into New York City.Some might find the strong Irish Catholic influence a bit much but that was the bedrock of Maggie-Now's life. Her eventual marriage to a man who could not stay home but left every Spring to roam the country brought both joy and heartache to Maggie. I loved reading about how she dealt with all her woes. After all, women still have plenty of woes. Betty Smith was also a playwright and her characters, dialogue, scene setting are all just great.

Elizabeth

August 30, 2022

Betty Smith is such a good writer. This story is easy to read and engaging and the characters come to life so quickly. It took me a little while to figure out who the Maggie of the title was because we first get the story of her father and then of her mother and father. Her father, Patrick, comes to New York from Ireland in the late 19th century. (This was fun to read after enjoying the first few Molly Murphy mysteries by Rhys Bowen.) Even though he has a bit of a rough start, Patrick lands on his feet and manages to find a place for himself, including a wife, Mary, who is far too good for him.Pat and Mary have a daughter named Margaret Rose, our heroine. We zip quickly through Maggie's childhood. She is quite a delightful, engaging child, and she has a happy childhood due mostly to her mother's good sense, household management, and quiet morality. (view spoiler)[ Maggie really grows up when Mary bears a child, Dennis (Denny), in her 40s and dies in childbirth. Maggie is a born mother, and she brings up Denny from an infant. Fortunately, she is more her mother's daughter than her father's and there is always good food, solid housing, and money to spare. Not a lot, perhaps, but quite enough for the three of them to live. Their Brooklyn neighborhood is close knit with many immigrants and a strong church presence with Father Flynn from the Catholic church. The gossip in the neighborhood is that Denny is really Maggie's illegitimate son. Pat is possessive so he doesn't let that stand for long. But this is a defining point for Maggie because she becomes a mother without being a mother. Because Pat is lazy and she is not, she really ends up being both Denny's parents, so the line between mother and sister is blurry for Denny, Margaret, and Pat. This is, of course, largely dependent on Pat as a character since he is unwilling to step into his fatherly role and quite content to leave the work to Maggie even though she's young. Pat is essentially lazy. He seems to hold down his job for 30 years through the sheer force of Mary's personality, gentle though it is, and because he is too lazy to switch. The sad part is that laziness can also beget cruelty in the subtler forms of neglect and being argumentative to no purpose. He manipulative, too, but still in a lazy way, so Maggie is able to stand up to him. Maggie falls prey to a quick romance with a man who shows up one day to start a class on how to sell books. Maggie is hungry for the normal occupations of youth, so she goes to the class for something to do. From then, it's clear that Claude Bassett is there for the long haul. I felt the beginnings of frustration with Maggie and her infatuation with Claude. He is strangely unforthcoming about his own past, and I was afraid that he would be cruel and abusive to Maggie. I don't like stories where a woman is so in love with a man that she wrecks her own chance of freedom. It seemed like this was going to happen with Maggie, but her relationship with Claude takes a turn and it's more complex than I anticipated.Claude does marry Maggie, even though he's not Catholic and she is devout. They settle into the Moore family home and Maggie and Claude are happy until the shift of winds in March. Claude sets out one day and doesn't return. This becomes the pattern through their whole married lives (approximately 15 years): Claude leaves in March and returns in November. He works a little when he comes back, but he mostly rests. The 'why' question thrums beneath the events of the story, but Claude is like a shy animal. Startle him and he'll run and not return. Maggie soon settles down into this pattern and though she doesn't like it, she learns to live with it. She handles Claude lightly. When Claude is home, he is loving to Maggie and kind to Denny. He is not extravagant or cruel or manipulative. Pat doesn't like him, but Claude likes Pat and seems to enjoy aggravating him in a mild way. They're not unhappy, even if they're not entirely happy. In this middle section, Claude reminded me soooo much of Jack Boughton from Marilynne Robinson's novels. Jack is arguably morally worse than Claude (abandoning his illegitimate child, stealing, etc.), but there is a fundamental decency to them both. They are both well educated. Even though Jack has a solid family and Claude has no family, they both have the same hole in their souls and so they must wander. They work hard when they work, but they can't stick to a job. They both have women they love, but even though the love is strong, they can't stay with their respective wives. They are both haunted by something they can't fix or find. An interesting point in the novel is around Maggie's longing for her own children and Claude's inability to give them to her. Inability or unwillingness? A visiting priest confronts Claude about whether he uses contraceptives at one point, but Claude is, as usual, evasive. It was never clear to me whether Claude was preventing pregnancy in some way or if there was something biologically preventing pregnancy on his side. It was clear that he didn't want children and he didn't want Maggie to have them. He was jealous of her love, though mildly so. That doesn't stop Maggie from longing for children. Even as she's caring for Denny, she begins to be a foster mother for orphans from the Catholic home. She cares for children up to age 6 when they go back to the home to be eligible for adoption. It's clear that she loves this role. She's a born mother, and she cares for the children tenderly. There are many details about how clean the home is, even though it's simple, how the fires are always blazing, the kitchen tidy, the linen freshly washed, etc. She is a good disciplinarian for Denny as well as he grows up. Denny becomes a young man towards the end of the story, and I loved how he finds his vocation and gets married. (Though his wife seems a little catty! She's young though.) The ending of the story felt both poignant and unfinished to me. I want more of Maggie's story. It felt like she was in a catch-22 with Claude. Though he did make her feel special and set apart, she also had a longing to help him know that he was loved and safe. And yet taking on that role in Claude's life prevented her from expanding her ability to mother and love to her own children. She is still under 40 when the story ends. Can we get a Maggie-Now part 2 please? (hide spoiler)]

Chelsea

May 24, 2010

LOVED this book. Betty Smith is now one of my favorite authors. As I've said before, I only wish that she would have written more books. I have one more to read, Tomorrow Will Be Better. Maggie-Now follows Patrick Denny and then his daughter, Maggie and son, Denny. It is such a lovely, touching, and endearing story about family and love and loss. I enjoyed it SO much.

Me

January 29, 2011

I liked this book almost as much as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I first read this as a pre-teen, then later re-read it a few years ago. I then dove into whatever information I could find on Betty Smith. Sure enough, her own life and romances were similar to those of Maggie Now. Betty Smith had a tendency to have romances with men that had either had drinking problems and/or were unreliable.

Kelly

May 01, 2020

I really wanted to love this character as much I loved A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It was close, but not quite. The author took a strange direction at the end that I didn't care for. But Maggie-Now is a fantastic character and I did enjoy the time I spent reading this book.

Mary

December 10, 2020

From notes I’ve left over the years in the 1958 first edition passed down to me by my mother, I have read “Maggie Now” 6 times, starting with when I was a teen in 1972. It’s my favorite of Betty Smith’s four novels, all of which I do adore. “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is Smith’s most famous novel, and “Maggie Now” is similarly the story of Irish immigrants living in Brooklyn. It’s funny, heartwarming and heartbreaking, and chock full of characters you will never forget. I ALWAYS cry (and I don’t cry easily at books).If you’ve never read this wonderful novel – treat yourself! And if it’s been a while since you read it – this is the perfect time to re-introduce yourself to this time, place, and these characters.

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