MARINA NEARY
Marina Neary "Wynfield's Kingdom" - a historical novel- Saturday, Nov 21 at Just Books 10AM - 12PM
Welcome to 1830s Bermondsey, London's most notorious slum, a land of gang wars, freak shows and boxing matches. Dr. Grant, a disgraced physician, adopts Wynfield, a ten-year old thief savagely battered by the gang leader for insubordination. The boy grows up to be a slender, idealistic opium addict who worships Victor Hugo. By day he steals and resells guns from a weapons factory. By night he amuses filthy crowds with his adolescent girlfriend, a fragile witch with wolfish eyes. Their tragicomic idyll ends when Wynfield falls under the spell of an elusive benefactress and leaves his bohemian, semi-criminal circle to follow her to Westminster. There, in the company of blue-blooded outcasts, he learns the secret of his origin and the role he is destined to play in the history of England. Invoking the ghosts of English anarchists, Guy Fawkes and Oliver Cromwell, Wynfield enters the world's biggest tavern - the Parliament, where he meets the most ruthless boy gang in the world - the British aristocracy. Using the mixture of chemicals, satire and horror, Wynfield stages an unforgettable performance and subdues the ruling class - if only for one day.
Marina Julia Neary is an award-winning historical essayist, multilingual arts & entertainment journalist, published poet, playwright, actress, dancer and choreographer. A specialist on the obscure works of Victor Hugo, she has lectured at the French Alliance. Her historical tragicomedy Hugo in London featuring the adventures of the French literary genius in England during the Crimean War was produced in Greenwich in 2008 and recently acquired by Heuer Publishing. A sequel, Lady with a Lamp: an Untold Story of Florence Nightingale, premiered in 2009 as a theatrical benefit for The Wyatt Foundation.
In 2007 she was commissioned to collect and publish the memoirs of residents from an affluent retirement community in Stamford, CT. The project involved interviewing over forty senior citizens over the age of ninety. A new Connecticut-based leisure publication Norwalk Beat has recently brought her on board as a steady contributor. She focuses on the entertainment industry in Connecticut. Her poems have been accepted by literary journals such as Alimentum and The Recorder and First Edition (UK). After having her short story accepted by Bewildering Stories Magazine, she was invited to join the editorial staff.
Wynfield's Kingdom is her first novel, in which she celebrates her love for Victorian history and the Romantic movement. The novel was published by FireshipPress, a publication specializing in historical and nautical fiction. Here are some of the reviews:
The spirits of Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo haunt this darkly compelling novel of the mid-Victorian underworld. Exhaustively researched, ambitious in scope and rich in period detail, King Wynfield is a harrowing tale of wretched poverty and desperate survival, of monstrous child abuse and atrocious acts committed in the name of science. Diana the wild robber maiden and her bandit lover Wynfield are larger than life anti-heroes destined to linger long in the reader’s imagination. - Eileen Kernaghan, author of Wild Talent: a Novel of the Supernatural
Neary writes with unbelievable power, yet never loses her sense of emotional insight... Wynfield's Kingdom is truly an extraordinary first novel. - Tom Grundner, author of Midshipman Prince.
In addition to her writing career, Neary has a career in the performing arts. She has starred in several independent horror films shot in CT and NY. In the 1990s she has competed in various talent competitions in New England and placed second in Miss LaSalle beauty pageant.
