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Small Changes
Small Changes is the explosive novel of women struggling to make their places in a man's world. Set against the early days of the feminist movement, it tells of two women and the choices they must make.
Intelligent, sensual Miriam Berg trades her doctorate for marriage and security, only to find herself hungry for a life of her own but terrified of losing her husband Shy, frightened Beth runs away from the very life Miriam seeks to a new world of different ideas, and a different kind of love--the love of another woman...
Intelligent, sensual Miriam Berg trades her doctorate for marriage and security, only to find herself hungry for a life of her own but terrified of losing her husband Shy, frightened Beth runs away from the very life Miriam seeks to a new world of different ideas, and a different kind of love--the love of another woman...
562 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
69 people are currently reading
645 people want to read
About the author
Marge Piercy
113 books922 followersMarge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
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April 20, 2016
This title was originally published in 1973 during the second wave of feminism that followed the US Civil Rights movement, and then the anti-war movement against the US invasion of Vietnam. Marge Piercy is a prominent veteran writer who spoke to women’s issues during that time and in years to follow. She doesn’t need my review, and neither does Open Road Integrated Media, I suspect, but my thanks go to them and Net Galley for letting me reread this wonderful novel digitally. I received this copy free in exchange for an honest review, but the reader should also know that I came to this galley with a strong, strong affinity for Piercy’s work already, and my bookshelves are lined with paperbacks and hard cover copies of her books. But they are thick and sometimes heavy to the arthritic hand, and it’s a joy to be able to read them on a slender electronic reader.
In 1973, many young adults had cast off the fetters of the impossibly repressive social relations of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. Their parents, on the other hand, were frequently entrenched in the mores that had been with them all of their lives, and felt threatened by the new ideas—some of which were actually pretty stupid—that many Boomer era teens and twenty-somethings embraced. Some notions that were new then are ones most of us now take for granted. Most of western civilization is no longer troubled, for example, by the idea that a woman may want to have a career, and that some women don’t want to have children. Most parents no longer speak of marrying a daughter as a way to transfer the expense of feeding and sustaining her from themselves to a man.
But in 1973, these social mores were still really prevalent. So to readers younger than fifty, or perhaps younger than forty, some of Piercy’s text is going to appear to be over-the-top, a vast exaggeration. It isn’t. And I have to thank Piercy for the gift of her insights, which came to me while I was a young woman still determining what was and was not acceptable in my own relationships.
The sly way Piercy makes her most prominent point is in following the lives of women, two in particular: Beth, who at the story’s outset, is indeed being “married off”, and Miriam, the least-favored child of the family who goes away to school and moves into a series of unconventional relationships. There’s a lot of the cultural flavor of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s here, and Piercy uses her narrative to describe ways in which even the most enlightened women, those seeking to build bonds with other women and support them as they set out to fulfill their dreams, nevertheless find themselves mired in unequal, sometimes physically and emotionally abusive relationships. Women that believe they have liberated themselves by refusing to marry, or by joining a commune and not being monogamous, nevertheless find themselves trapped in destructive situations. Piercy shows us how every woman in her story can see that a good friend is in a bad place; each woman doubts herself first when she starts to reconsider her own entanglements.
It is interesting in hindsight that communal and non-monogamous relationships could be discussed freely, but lesbianism was still so far out on the periphery that not even the most trusted of straight friends were necessarily going to be in on the nature of the coupling. And this is dead accurate given the time period; I was there. And gay sex among men was a mental cobweb to be brushed away. Tran sexuality was still considered a sign of mental illness by nearly everyone, and it isn’t in this book.
Because it deals with relationships and the internal narratives primarily of women, with occasional side-trips into the heads of the men both women encounter, and also of other women Beth and Miriam are close to, this novel is likely to be labeled “Chick Lit”, a genre title I have become increasingly reluctant to use. Think of it this way: how many women have read novels that are entirely about men or one man, and considered what they just read to be relevant and at times, superior literature? And now I have to wonder why, when a book is almost entirely about women or a woman, told from a feminine perspective, it is assumed by so many people that men should not be interested in that literature also?
Note that this tome exceeds 500 pages. The text itself should be accessible to anyone with a high school diploma or equivalency, but not everyone has sufficient stamina to make it through a book of this length. However, if one is on the borderline, and especially if one is a woman interested in evaluating the nature of our most important relationships, this would be a fine place to begin reading longer books.
For those that enjoy reading about this time period, and for those interested in modern feminism as well as the history of American feminist thought, Piercy’s body of work, including this title, should be unmissable. Her towering feminist presence was a beacon to so many of us, and many of the issues that were so urgent then are still urgent now.
In 1973, many young adults had cast off the fetters of the impossibly repressive social relations of the 1950’s and early 1960’s. Their parents, on the other hand, were frequently entrenched in the mores that had been with them all of their lives, and felt threatened by the new ideas—some of which were actually pretty stupid—that many Boomer era teens and twenty-somethings embraced. Some notions that were new then are ones most of us now take for granted. Most of western civilization is no longer troubled, for example, by the idea that a woman may want to have a career, and that some women don’t want to have children. Most parents no longer speak of marrying a daughter as a way to transfer the expense of feeding and sustaining her from themselves to a man.
But in 1973, these social mores were still really prevalent. So to readers younger than fifty, or perhaps younger than forty, some of Piercy’s text is going to appear to be over-the-top, a vast exaggeration. It isn’t. And I have to thank Piercy for the gift of her insights, which came to me while I was a young woman still determining what was and was not acceptable in my own relationships.
The sly way Piercy makes her most prominent point is in following the lives of women, two in particular: Beth, who at the story’s outset, is indeed being “married off”, and Miriam, the least-favored child of the family who goes away to school and moves into a series of unconventional relationships. There’s a lot of the cultural flavor of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s here, and Piercy uses her narrative to describe ways in which even the most enlightened women, those seeking to build bonds with other women and support them as they set out to fulfill their dreams, nevertheless find themselves mired in unequal, sometimes physically and emotionally abusive relationships. Women that believe they have liberated themselves by refusing to marry, or by joining a commune and not being monogamous, nevertheless find themselves trapped in destructive situations. Piercy shows us how every woman in her story can see that a good friend is in a bad place; each woman doubts herself first when she starts to reconsider her own entanglements.
It is interesting in hindsight that communal and non-monogamous relationships could be discussed freely, but lesbianism was still so far out on the periphery that not even the most trusted of straight friends were necessarily going to be in on the nature of the coupling. And this is dead accurate given the time period; I was there. And gay sex among men was a mental cobweb to be brushed away. Tran sexuality was still considered a sign of mental illness by nearly everyone, and it isn’t in this book.
Because it deals with relationships and the internal narratives primarily of women, with occasional side-trips into the heads of the men both women encounter, and also of other women Beth and Miriam are close to, this novel is likely to be labeled “Chick Lit”, a genre title I have become increasingly reluctant to use. Think of it this way: how many women have read novels that are entirely about men or one man, and considered what they just read to be relevant and at times, superior literature? And now I have to wonder why, when a book is almost entirely about women or a woman, told from a feminine perspective, it is assumed by so many people that men should not be interested in that literature also?
Note that this tome exceeds 500 pages. The text itself should be accessible to anyone with a high school diploma or equivalency, but not everyone has sufficient stamina to make it through a book of this length. However, if one is on the borderline, and especially if one is a woman interested in evaluating the nature of our most important relationships, this would be a fine place to begin reading longer books.
For those that enjoy reading about this time period, and for those interested in modern feminism as well as the history of American feminist thought, Piercy’s body of work, including this title, should be unmissable. Her towering feminist presence was a beacon to so many of us, and many of the issues that were so urgent then are still urgent now.
October 6, 2018
Oct 5 ~~ Review tomorrow.
Oct 6, 2018 ~~ This book tells the story of two women who are trying to figure out who they are meant to be (as we all must do at some point). They have pressures from themselves, their parents, the men in their lives, the government, and society itself. These pressures tend to force both women into the standard Ideal Female. But whose Ideal? And why does a strong woman who is unafraid to be different frighten those who create that Ideal?!
How do our two main characters respond to all of this? Each in a different way, and yet I could identify with both Beth and Miriam. I think that is what Piercy intended, since she dedicated the book this way:
For me.
For you.
For us.
Even for them.
The sadly astonishing fact that I picked up on while reading, especially with the SCOTUS controversy swirling and a confirmation vote taking place even as I type, is that so very little has really changed for women since 1972 when this book was first published, and now The Powers That Be want to push us all back into that tiny 'ideal' space where they think we belong.
No. No. No.
Read this book. Witness the lives of these women and their friends. And be brave enough to live your own life wherever it may lead, and whoever may object.
Oct 6, 2018 ~~ This book tells the story of two women who are trying to figure out who they are meant to be (as we all must do at some point). They have pressures from themselves, their parents, the men in their lives, the government, and society itself. These pressures tend to force both women into the standard Ideal Female. But whose Ideal? And why does a strong woman who is unafraid to be different frighten those who create that Ideal?!
How do our two main characters respond to all of this? Each in a different way, and yet I could identify with both Beth and Miriam. I think that is what Piercy intended, since she dedicated the book this way:
For me.
For you.
For us.
Even for them.
The sadly astonishing fact that I picked up on while reading, especially with the SCOTUS controversy swirling and a confirmation vote taking place even as I type, is that so very little has really changed for women since 1972 when this book was first published, and now The Powers That Be want to push us all back into that tiny 'ideal' space where they think we belong.
No. No. No.
Read this book. Witness the lives of these women and their friends. And be brave enough to live your own life wherever it may lead, and whoever may object.
May 21, 2011
Almost ten years ago I discovered the author Marge Piercy when I read her novel He, She, and It. As I do with any author whose book I really, really love, I ran right out and bought every other book of hers I could get my hands on, including Small Changes, which the cover blurb promised showcased two women and the changes they make in their lives.
::: First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage :::
The first character we meet is Beth, a recent high school student who is apparently getting married to her boyfriend Jim fresh out of high school. Beth had been studious, and a good student, but her parents either didn't have the money for college, or, as the book insinuates, didn't see the point of sending a girl to college, as she mentions that her wedding would have paid for two years of school. The novel is told from a third-person omniscient perspective, and Beth is shown to be very disconnected from the events surrounding her on her wedding day, an almost unwilling participant. Small Changes having been written in the midst of the feminist movement, of course, Beth soon finds herself in a dead-end job, married to a man who forces her into the traditional "wife" role where she has to cook and clean while Jim sits around and watches her. She decides one day that she is desperate for escape, and takes as much as she can to work with her, then skips out on work and goes to the bank, where she forges her husband's signature, takes half their money (which should legally be hers, right?) and hies off to Boston.
::: Bohemian Rhapsody :::
In Boston, Beth begins an affair with a man she meets through her job at MIT. She is very disconnected with him as well, but seems to fall into the affair and continue it almost for a "learning experience." Through the man (Tom Ryan), she meets the other people in his shared apartment: Dorine and Lennie, who seem to have a decent relationship that started with Dorine posing for Lennie's art; and Jackson, an often angry Vietnam veteran who needles Beth mercilessly. Beth also befriends Miriam, a graduate student at MIT who is working in the relatively new field of computer science, who is independent, seems to need no man other than on her own terms, and bounces back and forth between Jackson and his friend Phil, a poet and bartender.
When Beth ends her relationship with Ryan, she is more saddened at the loss of the others who surround the apartment, until Miriam gets together with Jackson again and gives Beth an in. It's at this point that the perspective switches over to Miriam, with huge chunks of exposition on her childhood in Flatbush. She is raised by an attention-demanding musician father and a subservient mother. She bucks their expectations that she will get married (marriage is referred to as her only "prospect") by going to college and planning on graduate school. She begins an affair with Phil while still in college, and ultimately, as her father is dying and she is sitting with Phil, who is on a bad acid trip, has to choose between her family and Phil.
This section also includes background information on Phil's childhood, and brings Miriam's story up to speed with Beth's.
::: Now Begins the Switcheroo :::
Once we've been sufficiently "introduced" to the two we are assuming are the two main characters, Piercy begins to switch back and forth between each of their perspectives, as well as introduce countless subplots involving new (or barely mentioned) characters. Beth's husband sends a detective after her, who threatens her with jail unless she returns, so like a sheep she does. Miriam sets up a menage a trois with Phil and Jackson to keep from having to choose between them. Beth runs off again, this time to California, where she falls into what appears to be an almost mentally abusive lesbian relationship. Miriam gets a job in a computer lab and works on her thesis. Beth returns to find Miriam married. And so on, and so on, and so on.
::: Dated Themes :::
While I understand that this book was originally written toward the end of the Vietnam War and smack in the middle of the Women's Movement, Piercy sacrifices plot and character development to repeatedly bash her reader over the head with the idea that marriage is BAD. Not one marriage in Small Changes is portrayed as a good one, from Phil's father's repeated abuse of Phil and his mother to Miriam's eventual loss of self married to her former boss.
In case you missed the above point, we were originally supposed to become attached to Beth and Miriam. Miriam ends up in a big house as a forced stay-at-home mother while Beth moves from commune to commune, living with women, joint-raising other women's children, and ultimately, committing herself to another lesbian relationship. Beth, who has almost no material comforts, is happy. Miriam, who has fiscal security in her marriage, is trapped by a husband who has forced her into a stereotyped role, with her doctorate buried in a drawer.
::: You've Come a Long Way, Baby :::
As a child of the 70s, I don't remember all that much about the Women's Movement, but I do remember communes. Small Changes, however, was re-released in 1997, and even at that point, it was out of date. The plot takes place over (my best guess) approximately five years, but by the end of the book, you feel like it's been about 40 years. Chapters jump from person to person and one moment to one months in the future with no transition at all, leaving you wondering what just happened for about half the book. Worst of all, I spent nearly 550 pages reading about characters who still had so little depth that I really didn't care about them. All I knew after all those words was that marriage is bad, and did you know that marriage is bad?
I consider myself a product of the feminist movement; I was able to make the decision myself whether to continue with my career (not unlike Miriam's in the programming, a male-dominated field), or whether to stay home with my children. Feminism is about having a choice, and Piercy's perspective in Small Changes is every bit as limiting as what she claims marriage is.
This review previously published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Small_...
::: First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage :::
The first character we meet is Beth, a recent high school student who is apparently getting married to her boyfriend Jim fresh out of high school. Beth had been studious, and a good student, but her parents either didn't have the money for college, or, as the book insinuates, didn't see the point of sending a girl to college, as she mentions that her wedding would have paid for two years of school. The novel is told from a third-person omniscient perspective, and Beth is shown to be very disconnected from the events surrounding her on her wedding day, an almost unwilling participant. Small Changes having been written in the midst of the feminist movement, of course, Beth soon finds herself in a dead-end job, married to a man who forces her into the traditional "wife" role where she has to cook and clean while Jim sits around and watches her. She decides one day that she is desperate for escape, and takes as much as she can to work with her, then skips out on work and goes to the bank, where she forges her husband's signature, takes half their money (which should legally be hers, right?) and hies off to Boston.
::: Bohemian Rhapsody :::
In Boston, Beth begins an affair with a man she meets through her job at MIT. She is very disconnected with him as well, but seems to fall into the affair and continue it almost for a "learning experience." Through the man (Tom Ryan), she meets the other people in his shared apartment: Dorine and Lennie, who seem to have a decent relationship that started with Dorine posing for Lennie's art; and Jackson, an often angry Vietnam veteran who needles Beth mercilessly. Beth also befriends Miriam, a graduate student at MIT who is working in the relatively new field of computer science, who is independent, seems to need no man other than on her own terms, and bounces back and forth between Jackson and his friend Phil, a poet and bartender.
When Beth ends her relationship with Ryan, she is more saddened at the loss of the others who surround the apartment, until Miriam gets together with Jackson again and gives Beth an in. It's at this point that the perspective switches over to Miriam, with huge chunks of exposition on her childhood in Flatbush. She is raised by an attention-demanding musician father and a subservient mother. She bucks their expectations that she will get married (marriage is referred to as her only "prospect") by going to college and planning on graduate school. She begins an affair with Phil while still in college, and ultimately, as her father is dying and she is sitting with Phil, who is on a bad acid trip, has to choose between her family and Phil.
This section also includes background information on Phil's childhood, and brings Miriam's story up to speed with Beth's.
::: Now Begins the Switcheroo :::
Once we've been sufficiently "introduced" to the two we are assuming are the two main characters, Piercy begins to switch back and forth between each of their perspectives, as well as introduce countless subplots involving new (or barely mentioned) characters. Beth's husband sends a detective after her, who threatens her with jail unless she returns, so like a sheep she does. Miriam sets up a menage a trois with Phil and Jackson to keep from having to choose between them. Beth runs off again, this time to California, where she falls into what appears to be an almost mentally abusive lesbian relationship. Miriam gets a job in a computer lab and works on her thesis. Beth returns to find Miriam married. And so on, and so on, and so on.
::: Dated Themes :::
While I understand that this book was originally written toward the end of the Vietnam War and smack in the middle of the Women's Movement, Piercy sacrifices plot and character development to repeatedly bash her reader over the head with the idea that marriage is BAD. Not one marriage in Small Changes is portrayed as a good one, from Phil's father's repeated abuse of Phil and his mother to Miriam's eventual loss of self married to her former boss.
In case you missed the above point, we were originally supposed to become attached to Beth and Miriam. Miriam ends up in a big house as a forced stay-at-home mother while Beth moves from commune to commune, living with women, joint-raising other women's children, and ultimately, committing herself to another lesbian relationship. Beth, who has almost no material comforts, is happy. Miriam, who has fiscal security in her marriage, is trapped by a husband who has forced her into a stereotyped role, with her doctorate buried in a drawer.
::: You've Come a Long Way, Baby :::
As a child of the 70s, I don't remember all that much about the Women's Movement, but I do remember communes. Small Changes, however, was re-released in 1997, and even at that point, it was out of date. The plot takes place over (my best guess) approximately five years, but by the end of the book, you feel like it's been about 40 years. Chapters jump from person to person and one moment to one months in the future with no transition at all, leaving you wondering what just happened for about half the book. Worst of all, I spent nearly 550 pages reading about characters who still had so little depth that I really didn't care about them. All I knew after all those words was that marriage is bad, and did you know that marriage is bad?
I consider myself a product of the feminist movement; I was able to make the decision myself whether to continue with my career (not unlike Miriam's in the programming, a male-dominated field), or whether to stay home with my children. Feminism is about having a choice, and Piercy's perspective in Small Changes is every bit as limiting as what she claims marriage is.
This review previously published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Small_...
November 5, 2018
Honestly, this book depressed me. Beth's story turned out okay but Miriam's was frustrating and depressing from start to finish. The political message of the author seemed to be more important than a satisfying narrative, and from that standpoint I understand the choice to have Beth end up happy with a woman while Miriam slowly drowned in her marriage. It seems the message is: traditional heterosexual relationships are doomed to fail. Dorine and Phil work out only in the context of them living in separate rooms in a commune and having a very loose and free relationship.
For a while, it seemed as if the message would be that men are incapable of anything but violence and possession, but then Phil had his last-minute redemption that he honestly didn't earn in the narrative. If the author wanted us to believe him worthy of forgiveness, she should probably have included another chapter from his POV that showed his growth and remorse. As it stands, all we had directly from Phil was an awful chapter that he spent sexually assaulting Miriam, objectifying women, hating our two protagonists for being people with lives of their own and reminiscing about a gang rape he had participated in but not been able to perform at, a traumatizing experience mainly because he had not been able to prove his manhood and had almost become a victim himself. I guess this was a clumsy attempt to show how toxic masculinity is pushed on working class boys, but as a character this renders him pretty much beyond redemption, at least not without a significant amount of work - and being assured it occurred off-screen just doesn't cut it.
A minor point of frustration, but a personal sore point: the word "bisexual" is used once or twice, dismissively. Wanda and Beth both end up identifying as lesbian despite continuing to have relationships with men as well as each other. It frustrates me to once again see the lesbian identity touted as the politically radical one and the bisexual identity discarded immediately.
In addition to all this, the book is, as is typical of white feminist literature at the time, painfully white. None of the characters have any friends of colour, except for Wanda's Puerto Rican ex husband who is never really seen. Even when they're organizing in radical political groups, everyone is white. There are unnamed Black women in Wanda's prison, part of the tragic backdrop. Most unsettling, Beth uses blackness as a metaphor for white womanhood in an argument with Jackson, in which he complains about passive women: "It's a power trip, and they were Uncle-Tomming too crudely for you. You go in for uppity n*****s. It gives you more sense of having overcome."
All in all, this novel is too much a product of its time and too much a clumsy political narrative to be an enjoyable read in this day and age. And was it really necessary to include five rape scenes?
For a while, it seemed as if the message would be that men are incapable of anything but violence and possession, but then Phil had his last-minute redemption that he honestly didn't earn in the narrative. If the author wanted us to believe him worthy of forgiveness, she should probably have included another chapter from his POV that showed his growth and remorse. As it stands, all we had directly from Phil was an awful chapter that he spent sexually assaulting Miriam, objectifying women, hating our two protagonists for being people with lives of their own and reminiscing about a gang rape he had participated in but not been able to perform at, a traumatizing experience mainly because he had not been able to prove his manhood and had almost become a victim himself. I guess this was a clumsy attempt to show how toxic masculinity is pushed on working class boys, but as a character this renders him pretty much beyond redemption, at least not without a significant amount of work - and being assured it occurred off-screen just doesn't cut it.
A minor point of frustration, but a personal sore point: the word "bisexual" is used once or twice, dismissively. Wanda and Beth both end up identifying as lesbian despite continuing to have relationships with men as well as each other. It frustrates me to once again see the lesbian identity touted as the politically radical one and the bisexual identity discarded immediately.
In addition to all this, the book is, as is typical of white feminist literature at the time, painfully white. None of the characters have any friends of colour, except for Wanda's Puerto Rican ex husband who is never really seen. Even when they're organizing in radical political groups, everyone is white. There are unnamed Black women in Wanda's prison, part of the tragic backdrop. Most unsettling, Beth uses blackness as a metaphor for white womanhood in an argument with Jackson, in which he complains about passive women: "It's a power trip, and they were Uncle-Tomming too crudely for you. You go in for uppity n*****s. It gives you more sense of having overcome."
All in all, this novel is too much a product of its time and too much a clumsy political narrative to be an enjoyable read in this day and age. And was it really necessary to include five rape scenes?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 11, 2021
i found this book when i was 16 years old, and it, along with much of Piercy's early poetry, has undeniably had a formative impact on some of the ways i think and feel about relationships, gender, politics, interpersonal relations. it couldn't have had that impact if i wasn't already bending that direction, but rereading it (for maybe the 7th or 8th time) 20 years later, i can see it very clearly. Piercy is problematically second-wave in the way she handles gender dynamics -- i don't think there's a single wholly sympathetic adult male character in this novel. but for all of that, i adore both Phil and Jackson, and identify with big pieces of both Beth and Miriam. the book is also insightful, thoughtful, complex and forgiving. (even Jackson learns to bend, at the end, and Phil is utterly transformed, as are Beth, Miriam and Doreen -- she perhaps most of all.)
this book is not perfect; Piercy handles her politics like a bulldozer, and sometimes it overwhelms the story. but it's still one of my absolute favorite books of all time, and one from which i have learned a lot, and in which i see a lot of the world reflected, and shining.
this book is not perfect; Piercy handles her politics like a bulldozer, and sometimes it overwhelms the story. but it's still one of my absolute favorite books of all time, and one from which i have learned a lot, and in which i see a lot of the world reflected, and shining.
November 4, 2022
Marge Piercy has long been one of my favourite authors but this book I have n0t read before. It's a problematic book. As a document on the white middle-class American women's liberation movement of the 70s it's a must-read. As a novel it's too detailed and slow-going. On the other hand, I don't know what she should have left out. Everything, every small nuance of the relationships, the sexism, the struggles of the two main characters Beth and Miriam to maintain their integrity in a world not only dominated by men but drenched in individual men's hostility and lack of understanding or even the will to understand, is all too recognisable, even today. It's a most depressing read and though it definitely has a 70's feel, it's as relevant as ever, especially in this world of Trumpism. Read it and stay with it.
November 7, 2019
DNF at 31%. Not a bad book by any means but it’s a bit too long for me to get invested.
August 30, 2018
Set in the 70s, against the Women's Lib movement, with the Vietnam war quietly in the background, mostly around the US East, Boston and other parts of Massachusetts, this talky realist novel is so good to delve right into, the plots spirals out, small climaxes rather than a big one--it is a female feminist novel after all! It revolves around two women: Beth, small, mousy, fragile and from a narrow-minded family who cannot afford a college degree but can afford a lush wedding for her and her high school sweetheart-jerk. There is also Miriam, a curvy, bold, studious Jew, who soon comes into her own as a woman and goes on to do a PhD. We follow their lives, which intermingle, over many years. This is hyper-realism--you get to know these people well. And it is in this way Piercy lays out her consciousness raising fiction. As in the book, women gather to talk about the way society fails them, rather than letting them isolate in their female guilt. I was tabbing so many page in this. So much of it is Piercy calling out structural bullshit. At times, this can mean dialogue that seems to just want to make a point--I don't think people would talk that way, but it's not boring, you're nodding your head. I didn't mind, I grew to love the characters, and trust in Piercy's messages. I thought, in a very subtle way, the ending was chilling. You see how men can get away with things, and how a woman not enlightened to this, can fall prey to judging her fellow women. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote, they have us conquered and divided. I love reading about communes, this ascetic ideal of life--I know little about the political context of this time. But I think it falls into an important role of women's fiction that sought to illuminate the trapping we fall into. Trapping after trapping I found all these women strong, although completely crushed.
It's such a 70s book too-- it has the context so right (70s novels familiar to me through my childhood love of Judy Blume perhaps). What's scary is that so much is relevant, tab worthy, still happening.
It's such a 70s book too-- it has the context so right (70s novels familiar to me through my childhood love of Judy Blume perhaps). What's scary is that so much is relevant, tab worthy, still happening.
July 27, 2021
It was serendipitous and delightful, that I read Piercy’s memoir, Sleeping with Cats, shortly before I read this masterfully crafted feminist novel. The background knowledge of her early home life, her hard work in anti-war, student, and feminist movements, and experiences with communal living sustained me through the long, detailed stories of Beth and Miriam. I didn’t care about them so much as characters as I did as aspects of Piercy herself. But the payoff for hours of patient reading to understand these characters is in the last chapters, when Piercy succinctly has Beth realize what two lesbian parents are truly up against:
“Beth’s gaze went to the horizon. Down in this valley, valley so low. She felt a vast weight coming to bear on her. The word ‘oppression’ came to her, not as a movement catch phrase—the oppression of women, the oppression of gay people, third world oppression, working-class oppression— but as the real weight of the system, of the hostile state crunching her under. ‘Why do they do this to us? We are so little.’
“‘The family is the stone of which the state is built,’ Wanda said dryly.’”
Now I can look back on all the ways Piercy portrayed this truth throughout the novel. It is rich in messy life stories to contemplate and learn from.
“Beth’s gaze went to the horizon. Down in this valley, valley so low. She felt a vast weight coming to bear on her. The word ‘oppression’ came to her, not as a movement catch phrase—the oppression of women, the oppression of gay people, third world oppression, working-class oppression— but as the real weight of the system, of the hostile state crunching her under. ‘Why do they do this to us? We are so little.’
“‘The family is the stone of which the state is built,’ Wanda said dryly.’”
Now I can look back on all the ways Piercy portrayed this truth throughout the novel. It is rich in messy life stories to contemplate and learn from.
February 24, 2018
It's such a comfort to read a book about the experience of being a woman (a white woman, rather) in male world. It's a comfort to read a book that talks about issues that I grapple with in daily life but still (still!) rarely encounter in literature. The novel alternates between two women's points of view. I found Beth endearing and relatable. The sections with Miriam were more difficult for me to read because she becomes so dishonest with herself, and so much in denial about her life, that at some times I just wanted to shake her and tell her to get out. In contrast, Beth becomes increasingly self-aware and self-actualized over the course of the novel and at one point I almost feared that Piercy was going to turn her into a saint but it never got to that point for me.
The chapter titles are witty and add a lot to the reading experience. Occasionally I felt like character interactions were just an excuse for Piercy to hash out two sides of an argument, but not often enough for it to be bothersome. Joining a commune has never been more appealing to me.
The chapter titles are witty and add a lot to the reading experience. Occasionally I felt like character interactions were just an excuse for Piercy to hash out two sides of an argument, but not often enough for it to be bothersome. Joining a commune has never been more appealing to me.
March 25, 2008
This was a somewhat predictable yet somewhat unpredictable book because none of the women ended up precisely where I thought they would at the end of the story. A tale of the poor options offered to women sometimes and the poor choices they sometimes make but with the end result being that given the choices they haveto change things, they sometimes choose well and sometimes not. What I liked was that this really reflected the unpredicatability of it all very well.
April 10, 2016
This story is about two women Beth and Miriam. Beth is marring her boyfriend from high school. He expects her to be the standard stay at home mother while he watches her maintain the house. But Beth has other dreams and she ends up running away to find herself. We also follow Miriam is a graduate from MIT and bounces around in her relationships. She is against the traditional opinion of marriage and makes her way. This story follows their different paths in life.
This story is based in the 70’s when women were starting to reach out from their normal place of the house. I really like following along as Beth and Miriam are stretching and stepping out into the non-traditional roles that they were expected to be in. It was fascinating to follow along both of them as they find themselves in such different paths from where they started.
I think this is a good book that shows a little of how women were changing roles in the 70’s. I think it’s a great story of no settling for a life of what everyone else expects you to live when you are not happy with it.
I received Small Changes for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
This story is based in the 70’s when women were starting to reach out from their normal place of the house. I really like following along as Beth and Miriam are stretching and stepping out into the non-traditional roles that they were expected to be in. It was fascinating to follow along both of them as they find themselves in such different paths from where they started.
I think this is a good book that shows a little of how women were changing roles in the 70’s. I think it’s a great story of no settling for a life of what everyone else expects you to live when you are not happy with it.
I received Small Changes for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
June 22, 2016
*Free copy given by Netgalley and Open Road Integrated Media for an honest review*
I am not usually harsh with my ratings but I couldn't bring myself to give this book more than two stars. In over 500 pages the author failed to create a connection between the characters and myself. I am a fan of poetry and I love when when structure and use create underlying meanings in a story but I just didnt feel that "Aha!" moment while I read. I expected more character development with the main characters but was sorely disappointed and that carried over to any supporting characters. The last chapter in this book is what really left me stumped because it didn't give the reader any kind of closure it just leaves you guessing,which in certain circumstances work wonderfully, but here all it did was annoy me.
I am not usually harsh with my ratings but I couldn't bring myself to give this book more than two stars. In over 500 pages the author failed to create a connection between the characters and myself. I am a fan of poetry and I love when when structure and use create underlying meanings in a story but I just didnt feel that "Aha!" moment while I read. I expected more character development with the main characters but was sorely disappointed and that carried over to any supporting characters. The last chapter in this book is what really left me stumped because it didn't give the reader any kind of closure it just leaves you guessing,which in certain circumstances work wonderfully, but here all it did was annoy me.
August 1, 2014
Apparently I like Marge Piercy's poetry, which I read in college, a lot more than her prose. I read over 500 pages of this 999 novel before giving up. There are several interconnected story lines here - the first of a bride who gives up on her marriage (and no one will blame here who reads it). It abruptly changes to one of her Greenwich Village friends/ housemates - an intellectual Jewish woman with a highly dysfunctional family - who lets the men in her life walk all over her. After hundreds of pages of repeatedly bad relationships I gave up. I may check it out of the library again & finish it, but for now it's just too bleak.
August 21, 2017
This book is hands-down my favorite book of all time. Wow, just wow. The characters felt like real people to me and the way they interacted with each other touched me so incredibly deeply... Piercy paints a portrait of love, sexuality, and womanhood that is so real and human and moving.
February 28, 2008
Must read.
February 27, 2011
When I read this in the early 70s, I thought it was one of the best depictions of 60s alternative life I'd read. I read the whole thing in a couple of days.
March 28, 2020
I love the characters, Bethie and Miriam and Dorine and Wanda. Even Phil, who is a pain in the arse. But it's not an easy read. 1960s US politics and grass roots activism. Women's lives.
June 6, 2020
"Admiration from a woman was more of a gift than from a man; men never admired her so simply. They desired, they suppressed desire and resented, they acknowledged desire but felt unwilling to respond, so condescended."
"What's called loving is part sexual service -- mutual or not. Part of what I call life-support functions: all those daily jobs that make the house function like cleaning the toilet and making food to appear and garbage to vanish and beds to be usable and floors to be passable and clothes to be wearable. Assuring the house has in it what's used for blowing the nose and making the headache go away and putting salve on the sore thumb. Part is plain body servant. Part is emotional self-titillation. Playing dramas with, around, under another person to make you feel alive. That's what I see people meaning when they talk about love. That's what I used to mean."
"She could not imagine a tighter hell than being cooped up with him clenching his jaws and driving, driving while the radio sang about love and sweet dreams and easy sex. The Stones sang of women who were under their thumb, while other groups beseeched girls to give their favours, be true, stop hanging on, or go away. They all sounded like bad jokes to her. She remembered in the early days of her marriage rock music had seemed to promise her life and space and energy. Now it felt like her enemy, reinforcing in him images of how men and women were supposed to be."
"In the typing pool, she got in more trouble for standing out in any way than for losing letters, misfiling invoices, standardly misspelling words, or taking half the afternoon to type one letter. The men who could have you fired would do so more quickly if they noticed you did not shave your legs than if you broke the Xerox machine."
"There was Miriam dancing now with Phil, they were being haughty and languid and menacing. They were flirting and acting out an elaborate seduction. They were doing karate without touch. Miriam was laughing with her body while her eyes shone and her hair stood on end. She was hot and flushed. Joy radiated from her like steam. She was totally enjoying herself, having forgotten the party and everyone, including Neil. Neil was trying to look amused but not succeeding. He looked irritated, he looked worried, he looked scared. Perhaps he had never seen Miriam dance; it did not fit into their life together. He looked at her as though she had taken leave of her sense and begun throwing dishes around the room. [...] Miriam radiated energy. She was more beautiful dancing than she ever was still; and Neil did not like it. He saw that she was paying him no attention, that she did not act like his wife and the mother of his child. She was so involved in dancing she had nothing left over to care what she looked like or who watched or whether her hair was flying or she was sweating. [...] Neil stared and frowned and brooded. Coming off him was not so much jealousy as fear, fear of the sudden unknown wild woman, dismay, roles confounded."
"What's called loving is part sexual service -- mutual or not. Part of what I call life-support functions: all those daily jobs that make the house function like cleaning the toilet and making food to appear and garbage to vanish and beds to be usable and floors to be passable and clothes to be wearable. Assuring the house has in it what's used for blowing the nose and making the headache go away and putting salve on the sore thumb. Part is plain body servant. Part is emotional self-titillation. Playing dramas with, around, under another person to make you feel alive. That's what I see people meaning when they talk about love. That's what I used to mean."
"She could not imagine a tighter hell than being cooped up with him clenching his jaws and driving, driving while the radio sang about love and sweet dreams and easy sex. The Stones sang of women who were under their thumb, while other groups beseeched girls to give their favours, be true, stop hanging on, or go away. They all sounded like bad jokes to her. She remembered in the early days of her marriage rock music had seemed to promise her life and space and energy. Now it felt like her enemy, reinforcing in him images of how men and women were supposed to be."
"In the typing pool, she got in more trouble for standing out in any way than for losing letters, misfiling invoices, standardly misspelling words, or taking half the afternoon to type one letter. The men who could have you fired would do so more quickly if they noticed you did not shave your legs than if you broke the Xerox machine."
"There was Miriam dancing now with Phil, they were being haughty and languid and menacing. They were flirting and acting out an elaborate seduction. They were doing karate without touch. Miriam was laughing with her body while her eyes shone and her hair stood on end. She was hot and flushed. Joy radiated from her like steam. She was totally enjoying herself, having forgotten the party and everyone, including Neil. Neil was trying to look amused but not succeeding. He looked irritated, he looked worried, he looked scared. Perhaps he had never seen Miriam dance; it did not fit into their life together. He looked at her as though she had taken leave of her sense and begun throwing dishes around the room. [...] Miriam radiated energy. She was more beautiful dancing than she ever was still; and Neil did not like it. He saw that she was paying him no attention, that she did not act like his wife and the mother of his child. She was so involved in dancing she had nothing left over to care what she looked like or who watched or whether her hair was flying or she was sweating. [...] Neil stared and frowned and brooded. Coming off him was not so much jealousy as fear, fear of the sudden unknown wild woman, dismay, roles confounded."
March 17, 2017
Despite the fact that this book is set in the 1960s/70s, I found I could relate all too well to the characters Piercy has created here. Watching Beth and Miriam as they go through their relationships (mostly with men) was painful in the way that watching a good friend date shitty men is painful. It is very much about women's emotional labour (though the book never uses that relatively modern term) and unpaid labour such as housework.
Miriam, in particular, felt like a close friend who is miserable but stuck in her "cool girl" phase - who thinks she's unlike other women, who thinks she is somehow immune to all the patriarchal hurdles because she is different from other women, above the drama and is friends with men.
This book was written in the heyday of second wave feminism, and it shows. It was really, truly refreshing to read this book that is unabashedly angry at MEN, and not stepping lightly around the topic as if frightened that some fedora-wearing bro is going to hop out of the bushes yelling "NOT ALL MEN". I can actually just imagine cis-het men screaming "not all men" at it because of how the male characters are portrayed. That said, this book effectively explores the issue of sexism, particularly in the context of romantic, heterosexual relationships, and that portrayal is necessary to that accomplishment. And, if I'm being frank, many of the patterns Piercy illustrates here ~still ring true~ so it seems pretty damn relevant.
In terms of intersectionality, this book could use improvement. The cast was very white, with the rare exception on the edge of the plot. There are no transpeople mentioned, although, in all frankness, as I read through the book, I was afraid that there would be, and that there would be some stupid TERF bullshit to go with it. There wasn't, but since there was simply no portrayal of a transperson, that's not saying much.
Last thing, neither here nor there in terms of the quality of this book - there's a lot of sex in this novel. The heterosexual sex sounds pretty mediocre-at-best (there's a lot of coercion and rape as well) and the lesbian sex isn't really given much description. More importantly, it's sex with multiple partners in the late 60s and 70s. And OH MY GOD FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING PEOPLE WEAR FUCKING CONDOMS I DON'T CARE THAT THERE'S A DIAPHRAGM OR THE PILL OR THAT AIDS HASN'T YET KILLED MILLIONS (it already existed then, people just weren't paying much attention yet) THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER STIs JUST WEAR GODDAMN CONDOMS. #readingolderbookswithsex
Miriam, in particular, felt like a close friend who is miserable but stuck in her "cool girl" phase - who thinks she's unlike other women, who thinks she is somehow immune to all the patriarchal hurdles because she is different from other women, above the drama and is friends with men.
This book was written in the heyday of second wave feminism, and it shows. It was really, truly refreshing to read this book that is unabashedly angry at MEN, and not stepping lightly around the topic as if frightened that some fedora-wearing bro is going to hop out of the bushes yelling "NOT ALL MEN". I can actually just imagine cis-het men screaming "not all men" at it because of how the male characters are portrayed. That said, this book effectively explores the issue of sexism, particularly in the context of romantic, heterosexual relationships, and that portrayal is necessary to that accomplishment. And, if I'm being frank, many of the patterns Piercy illustrates here ~still ring true~ so it seems pretty damn relevant.
In terms of intersectionality, this book could use improvement. The cast was very white, with the rare exception on the edge of the plot. There are no transpeople mentioned, although, in all frankness, as I read through the book, I was afraid that there would be, and that there would be some stupid TERF bullshit to go with it. There wasn't, but since there was simply no portrayal of a transperson, that's not saying much.
Last thing, neither here nor there in terms of the quality of this book - there's a lot of sex in this novel. The heterosexual sex sounds pretty mediocre-at-best (there's a lot of coercion and rape as well) and the lesbian sex isn't really given much description. More importantly, it's sex with multiple partners in the late 60s and 70s. And OH MY GOD FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING PEOPLE WEAR FUCKING CONDOMS I DON'T CARE THAT THERE'S A DIAPHRAGM OR THE PILL OR THAT AIDS HASN'T YET KILLED MILLIONS (it already existed then, people just weren't paying much attention yet) THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER STIs JUST WEAR GODDAMN CONDOMS. #readingolderbookswithsex
July 16, 2023
Trigger warning for this book: multiple graphic depictions of rape
I love Marge Piercy's poetry and have for a long time, but her novels are a bit of a mixed bag. This is one of her earlier novels, and I think it shows. She does wonderful character studies and is very faithful to period details, but this book is long and meandering and the resolutions are not particularly satisfying. I found myself wishing that she had perhaps started the novel with the details from the last 100 pages and gone forward to tell that story, which would have been stronger. Shout-out, however, for her very vivid depiction of the reasons Beth wanted to leave Syracuse and fell in love with Boston: I can say that resonated even fifty years later! Final review: just okay, and if it hadn't been by an author I love so much, I probably wouldn't have finished it.
I love Marge Piercy's poetry and have for a long time, but her novels are a bit of a mixed bag. This is one of her earlier novels, and I think it shows. She does wonderful character studies and is very faithful to period details, but this book is long and meandering and the resolutions are not particularly satisfying. I found myself wishing that she had perhaps started the novel with the details from the last 100 pages and gone forward to tell that story, which would have been stronger. Shout-out, however, for her very vivid depiction of the reasons Beth wanted to leave Syracuse and fell in love with Boston: I can say that resonated even fifty years later! Final review: just okay, and if it hadn't been by an author I love so much, I probably wouldn't have finished it.
September 7, 2017
I'm just not going to finish this. I read some of the other reviews and remembering the back cover copy, Miriam trades her PhD for marriage? WTF? I'll pass.
I get it that feminism in the early days was often pretty hardcore, but there isn't one male character that is likeable, and the female characters are only so-so. I knew as soon as I started that this wasn't going to be my favorite book, but I expected some of the *uplifting* spiritual/emotional growth common to most "women's lit." Small Changes is lacking that. It's just dreary.
I loved "Woman on the Edge of Time" and I've heard good things about "He, She, It." Maybe I'll check out the second one. But this leaves with doubt.
I get it that feminism in the early days was often pretty hardcore, but there isn't one male character that is likeable, and the female characters are only so-so. I knew as soon as I started that this wasn't going to be my favorite book, but I expected some of the *uplifting* spiritual/emotional growth common to most "women's lit." Small Changes is lacking that. It's just dreary.
I loved "Woman on the Edge of Time" and I've heard good things about "He, She, It." Maybe I'll check out the second one. But this leaves with doubt.
December 15, 2022
I really loved reading this book almost 50 years after first published because some aspects of it still rings true in society today. There are premonitions that were solid about cultural changes, both in the cynical and hopeful realms. The downside was this is over 500 pages and it was too much story. I was invested in the characters and remember when I would have savored good writing never ending, but in 2022, I don’t have that kind of time anymore.
January 12, 2023
US women struggle to burst asunder stultifying social norms of the 60s and 70s while they try to cope with the horrible men in their lives. A groundbreaking second-wave feminist novel of commitment - similar in some ways to Marilyn French's The Women's Room but focused on a slightly younger generation with more radical politics.
June 13, 2024
The message is worth 5 stars, I just struggled making it through the majority of the book; Anytime one picks up feminist literature, one must be prepared to get through pages and pages of atrocities committed by men and it was nauseating. But the build up to the finale was worth it in my opinion, IF you can stomach yet another series of humiliations inflicted upon the heroines by men.
Read
March 19, 2020An early exploration of the ways that new feminist ideas of lifestyles emerged from challenges several women faced in the early late 60s / early 70s. Worth reading but possibly a bit dated 50 years later.
June 7, 2021
3.5 rounded down. Parts of the book were gripping but especially towards the end it felt laboured in places. I agree with some reviewers who say that the overarching message (marriage is bad) was somewhat hammered home...
September 17, 2021
Follow the relationships of about a dozen people as their lives evolve through the early 1970s. What makes a relationship good and fulfilling? How can a group of people live together? What is feminism? What is friendship? These are among the themes explored.
September 27, 2024
Very interesting to get an insight to how women were living at that time and what there pressures were. Inspiring to see other ways of doing life and still very relevant topics!
Slow changes in the book, moves steadily.
Slow changes in the book, moves steadily.
August 17, 2019
A seminal novel--Marge Piercy was at her prime during this period, and that's saying a lot.
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