''Mary and the Giant'' is an early, non-science fiction novel written by Philip K. Dick in the years between 1953 and 1955, but not published until 1987.

Plot introduction

In 1953, Joseph Schilling arrives in

Pacific Park Pacific Park is an oceanfront amusement park located in Santa Monica, California. The park, located on the Santa Monica Pier, looks directly out on the Pacific Ocean, in the direction of Catalina Island. It is the only amusement park directly l ...

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

. He establishes a small

music shop A music store or musical instrument store is a retail business that sells musical instruments and related equipment and accessories. Some music stores sell additional services, such as music lessons, music instrument or equipment rental, or re ...

, and later, Danny and Beth Coombes join him. Mary Anne Reynolds is also interviewed for a position at the shop, but backs off after Schilling touches her. After leaving home, Carleton Tweaney, an African-American

lounge singer Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The rang ...

(and her lover) finds her a new home. However, Beth has already slept with Joseph, and now moves on to Carleton. Provoked by her affair, Danny tries to shoot Carleton, but instead dies himself. Carleton and Mary Anne break up, and she decides to work for Schilling after all, as well as becoming sexually involved with him, despite a forty-year age difference. He helps her to rent and renovate her own

apartment An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ma ...

, but Mary Anne decides to live in a dilapidated

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

neighbourhood instead. In an epilogue, she has married Paul Nitz, a pianist who works with Carleton. The author himself once described the novel as: "A retelling of

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...

Don Giovanni ''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; Vienna (1788) title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanis ...

, with Schilling seduced and destroyed by a young woman."

Plot introduction

Footnotes

References

See also