Rating: 
Summary: What a book!
Review: Title: Marjorie Morningstar
Author: Herman Wouk
# of pages: 565
Category: Life Story
Date Started: 8/25/03
Date Completed: 10/3/03Annotation: Marjorie Morningstar is a beautiful, young girl who dreams of being an actress. By attending a famous acting camp, she is thrown into the dark world of theater. Now Marjorie's life has changed forever. At the camp she meets Noel Airman who seems to be perfect in every way. No matter what Marjorie does she can not seem to get Noel to marry her, so she puts aside her dream of becoming an actress and got a job working for her father. Marjorie has saved money as quickly as she could with her new job to be able to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to get Noel back once and for all. Author Bio: Herman Wouk was born in New York into a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. He went to Columbia University where he edited the college humor magazine. After he got an AB degree at Columbia he was a radio scriptwriter and he briefly served in the US government, producing radio broadcasts to sell war bonds. Then he joined the United States Navy and served in the Pacific. He began his first novel during off duty hours at sea. In 1945 he married Betty Sarah Brown; they had three sons. Since 1946 Wouk worked as a full time writer. Later he was a visiting professor and a scholar-in-residence at Aspen Institute, Colorado. He was also a Trustee of the College of the Virgin Islands and he was on the Board of Directors of Washington National Symphony. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Kennedy Center Productions. Wouk's debut as a novelist happened in 1947 with Aurora Dawn. When I first found out that I had to read for class, I didn't know what book to choose. My mom told me that when she was about my age she read a book called Marjorie Morningstar. She said it is not only her favorite book but my grandmother's as well. The first thing that crossed my mind was that this book was ancient and I was never going to like anything that my mother and grandmother found interesting. I finally decided to give the book a try and right away I found that I could relate to it. It was about a young girl, my age, with hopes and dreams, who learns what life is all about. The one thing that I really liked about this book was that it ends in reality and not a fairy tale. It was a lot easier to relate to Marjorie when everything she dreamed didn't come true. This book showed me that no matter what generation you're from, a teenage girl is a teenage girl. I recommend this book for older teen girls. I definitely give it 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: When I first read MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR, well over twenty years ago, it already had been a classic for decades. Author Herman Wouk does a wonderful job of exploring the emotions of a young woman against the backdrop of Depression-era New York. Re-reading this book again as a adult, it becomes even more obvious what a genius the author is--not surprising when one realizes that this same versatile person also wrote books as diverse as THE CAINE MUTINY, DON'T STOP THE CARNIVAL, YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE, THIS IS MY GOD and, perhaps most significantly, THE WINDS OF WAR and its sequel, WAR AND REMEMBRANCE. Mr. Wouk clearly is an author of major proportions, and MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR probably is his most-loved work. The novel has become the definitive story about what is was like to come of age in New York City during the financially-deprived decade of the 1930's. MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR is a book to be read, and savored, and read again. It has withstood the tests of time.
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