Le Rivage des femmes

by Pamela Sargent

Women rule the world in this suspenseful love story set in a postnuclear future. Having expelled men from their vast walled cities to a lower-class wilderness, the women in this futuristic universe dictate policy and chart the future through control of scientific and technological advances. Among their laws are the rules for reproductive engagement, an act now viewed as a means of procreation rather than an act of love. In this rigidly defined environment, a chance meeting between a woman exiled from the female world and a wilderness man triggers a series of feelings, actions, and events that ultimately threaten the fabric of the women's constricted society. Trying to evade the ever-threatening female forces and the savage wilderness men, the two lovers struggle to find a safe haven and reconcile the teachings of their upbringings with their newly awakened feelings.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Feminism, Dystopia, Fantasy, Post Apocalyptic, Romance

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Pamela Sargent has won the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and has been a finalist for the Hugo Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. In 2012, she was honored with the Pilgrim Award by the Science Fiction Research Association for lifetime achievement in science fiction scholarship. She is the author of the novels Cloned Lives, The Sudden Star, Watchstar, The Golden Space, The Alien Upstairs, Eye of the Comet, Homesmind, Alien Child, The Shore of Women, Venus of Dreams, Venus of Shadows, Child of Venus, Climb the Wind, and Ruler of the Sky. Her most recent short story collection is Thumbprints, published by Golden Gryphon Press, with an introduction by James Morrow. The Washington Post Book World has called her “one of the genre's best writers.”

In the 1970s, she edited the Women of Wonder series, the first collections of science fiction by women; her other anthologies include Bio-Futures and, with British writer Ian Watson as co-editor, Afterlives. Two anthologies, Women of Wonder, The Classic Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s and Women of Wonder, The Contemporary Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s, were published by Harcourt Brace in 1995; Publishers Weekly called these two books “essential reading for any serious sf fan.” Her most recent anthology is Conqueror Fantastic, out from DAW Books in 2004. Tor Books reissued her 1983 young adult novel Earthseed, selected as a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association, and a sequel, Farseed, in early 2007. A third volume, Seed Seeker, was published in November of 2010 by Tor. Earthseed has been optioned by Paramount Pictures, with Melissa Rosenberg, scriptwriter for all of the Twilight films, writing the script and producing through her Tall Girls Productions.

A collection, Puss in D.C. and Other Stories, is out; her novel Season of the Cats is out in hardcover and will be available in paperback from Wildside Press. The Shore of Women has been optioned for development as a TV series by Super Deluxe Films, part of Turner Broadcasting.

Pamela Sargent lives in Albany, New York.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book's exploration of daring feminist themes like "Wouldn't it be awful if the world was controlled by domineering man-hating lesbian separatists who forced all the men to live in primitive squalor? I bet they'd ostracize any woman who even wondered if men should be treated like more than sperm factories." and "Know what's way more natural and fulfilling than same-sex relationships? Heterosexual monogamy! Your lesbian commune will think it's gross, but follow your heart!"

Truly a ground-breaking and radical commentary on our patriarchal society.

[Empress · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man writes a dystopian piece of literature where the government is consisted of men and women are oppressed - it's just a work of fiction. A woman writes a dystopian piece of literature where the totalitarian government is consisted of women and oppresses men - it is immediately labeled feminist.

[Olivia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Warning: This review is full of expletives.

This book was terrible. It wasn't just the story, or the huge boring info dumps. The ebook was full of odd discrepancies. Like, the main male character was Arvil in the text and Avril in the headings. Lol. Capital C's were rendered as G's. That type of thing.

The first section focused on a female character inside the city who doesn't know what to do with her life. She's bad at math (FUCK YOU, "feminist" author) and besides, science and stuff hadn't progressed in hundreds of years because men are forced to live in hunter gatherer bands, and everyone knows that innovation and science are propelled by war and the need to dominate, which women don't have (Oh, FUCK YOU).

The next section is about an exiled woman (who is scared of everything, and embodies every gender essentialist cliche ever) and her male protector. They look for a refuge where she can live without fear of men, but really don't find it.

Through most of the book, her "protector" whines about his blue balls. It takes the form of "fantasy dialogue". "Your spell is powerful over me" and "I long for your blessings. " Like, STFU, dude. If you'd only murdered her like the "Goddess" told you to, we'd both be suffering a lot less right now.

Of course, they fall in love and crap, and are boring while they do it.

I hated this book. A LOT. It needed an editor, at least. It was about five hundred pages too long, and probably shouldn't exist in the first place.

Here's the entire plot: Lesbians are bad (and also very boring), but men are worse. Less boring, but still worse. Much, much worse.

There was nothing here that I would recognize as feminist, unless it was some warped-ass MRA definition of the word. Negative stars are not possible, which makes me sad.

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like some of the reviewers didn’t really get the book. It’s a think-piece, not a mindless read, so if you take the story at face value you aren’t going to get the whole point.

To clarify: the book challenges social norms. If you take those challenges at their face value (as the characters in the novel do) you’re not going to get the same critical look at society that you would if you view them as criticism of the norm. This happens in multiple places in the book: the female-led society, the sexual segregation, homosexuality as a norm, women in science and tech as a norm, etc.

The book also isn’t feminist in the idea that women are better than men. But it is feminist in that it shows women in power. Moreover, the point of the book is that both men and women are equally capable of committing the same (and different) horrors and subjugation against one another, and that only if we treat each other as true equals will we reach a lasting peace. Welcome to your third-wave feminism - everyone is equal to everyone else.

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is often given a spot on lists of classic feminist sci-fi. The post-apocolyptic setting tells a story of women living in high-tech enclaves/cities while men are banished to the wilderness to live in hunter/gatherer bands. The men are encouraged to worship the female Goddess and are "called" to the enclaves to provide sperm. Boy children are sent out to live with the men while daughters remain in the enclaves.

The book had two major problems for me:

1) The overarching hetero-normative tone. Basically, the men and women have same-sex relationships in their communities, but the ultimate plotline is that a male-female relationship is superior and ideal if it can be obtained without too much power disparity. The male hero no longer has interest in other men once he has true love with a banished woman.

2) The passages actually describing the sex were out of place and strange. They ran overlong and seemed like the author wasn't sure if she was trying to write an erotic passage (like the steamy scenes from The Clan of the Cave Bear and its ilk) or a purely descriptive one.

A more minor complaint is that the world-building was inconsistent. The cities were not fully described--no explanation was given for the food production for the enclaves, the political system was only partially fleshed out.

Still, the battle of the sexes aspect and the exploration of the power dynamic made the book interesting.

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels very weird to give this book 4 stars. Because there was so much that I did *not* like about it, so much that was flawed, and yet I found the story really interesting nonetheless and I expect I'll keep thinking about it long after having finished it.

*light spoilers ahead*

To start off with what's not likeable: oh sweet gasping goodness, the gender essentialism. The world, where females live apart from men in technologically advanced enclaves and men live on the outside in caveman-like bands, is going to be hard for any modern reader to accept. Somehow, women have completely forgotten what it's like to live with and have sex with men. Because I guess men f*ed up civilization, and the women kicked them out of the enclaves once they started to go out into the recovering world? I can't even begin to list all the questions I have about how and why this world would come about and be sustainable (and actually, am sort of more interested in THAT story), and I suspect many readers won't be able to suspend their disbelief at all.

Also: the storytelling style itself. It's a lot of "tell, don't show" going on. This book has a lot of Big Ideas it wants to convey, and the narrative style is heavy on exposition because of it. Despite the shifting narrators, from Laissa to Arvil to Birana, the voices all sound kinda samey.

And as far as characterization goes, I feel like there was an incredible amount of backstory between Laissa and Birana that it would have been really nice to see, and made the ending pay off a bit more emotionally. This is prime example (not the only one) where the Big Ideas in the story take precedence over character development. I suppose more frequent readers of traditional sci-fi may be more comfortable with this than me.

But anyway, if you can put all this aside - and boy, is it a lot - the story itself actually presents some compelling conflict and moves from one challenge to the next in an interesting fashion. Yeah, I was rolling my eyes at all the common tropes of heterosexual monogamy ("if anyone else even looks at you, I will kill them! Because that's what love is! *EYEROLL*), but I did cheer for Birana and Arvil to figure things out, and I give kudos to Sargent for not just making their inevitably slide into a sexual relationship end all hearts and stars and flowers. They still struggle with one another, even up through the end, and I respect that realism.

I also liked that the end did not explode the whole foundation of the society Sargent was writing about. It takes more than one series of events like those in this story to change a world, and I felt that what happens with Laissa and where the story leaves us was believable and thought-provoking.

This would be a great book for a book club - lots of interesting discussion and debate guaranteed.

[L'encre de la magie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 super intéressant comme retournement d'histoire

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given our collective frustration with the election/current administration/ongoing hot mess of the US right now, I figured that some good old 80s feminist sci-fi would soothe my soul. The back of this one promised to cure what ails me, with its post-apocalyptic, toss those foolish men out of our cities, sisterhood surviving 4-evah vibe going on.

This is the tale of a young woman raised in the technologically advanced city of the future where education and stewardship of humanity are valued goals, and a young man raised with a spear in his hand in the wilds beyond the city walls. After an apocalypse of some sort (it was the 80s, so one would assume nukes were involved), humanity eventually scraped themselves up, built some nice places to live, then kicked the men out to fend for themselves since they were the ones that blew everything up in the first place. Women live in utopian peace and bland prosperity, where the worst thing to happen is that scientific innovation seems to have stagnated somewhere around the time that extended lifespan and carefree excellent health were achieved. The now feral menfolk live in brutal caveman tribes out in the wilderness, kill each other over campsites or a good hunk of meat, and are indoctrinated to worship the image of the Goddess to keep them tractable. It's a setup ripe to explore the basic urges of humanity, the essence of social conditioning and how it manipulates all of us, and maybe even the biology of love.

Oh Ms Sargent, what have you done here?

'The Shore of Women' unfortunately reads like a very early work where an author has an excellent idea and then not quite the craft to carry it off. All the young scientist women of the city are Mean Girls (tm) that almost literally tell our heroine "you can't sit with us" due to her bizarre interest in the liberal arts (Writers? Eww!). Each of these women are in philosophic lock-step with each other, and while that may be the point of the lack of societal innovation, it makes for a whole pile of indistinguishably one-dimensional characters. Even after she gets booted from the city and is eventually forced to question the society in which she was raised, her struggle is to resist change, not overcome it, making her an obnoxiously passive heroine. By the time our 2 main characters consummate the lust he's been conditioned to desire and has been nudging her to accept (which is exactly as Nice Guy (tm) creepy pressuring as it sounds), she gets to learn that sex with men is a whole new ecstasy that's never been possible before in her whole bland, safe, stifling lesbian life. Seriously. The final nail in the coffin is that despite her educated and worldly upbringing in contrast to his practical and simplistic caveman mindset, these two characters have the same narrative voice, and I don't particularly care what happens to either one.

[Diana Kathryn Penn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This dystopian story deals with the reversal of roles between men and women, and who holds the power. The investigation of what might be different if women were in charge was a fascinating premise, heightened by the meticulous physical descriptions of people, places and survival tactics on both sides of the wall.

I was very impressed with Pamela Sargent's storytelling in this book. Her use of an involved character to tell the story was especially interesting to me. I was unaware who, exactly, the narrator was until the very last chapter. This made the story much more engaging to me.

The characters are easy to relate to, and don't seem all that different from the people I know today. This is a story that has a level of realism that, if considered without prejudice, is extremely plausable.

I listened to the audiobook version, and was impressed with the use of two different voices, one male and one female, to show the distinct differences not only between characters, but between the divisions of society, as well. Having two narrators made the story much more engaging for me.

[Megan Baxter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have now read at least three books that are about a world without men. Or rather, if not a world without men, a world where women are the safekeepers of civilization, and men are exiled to short brutish lives in the wilderness. There's a distinct women/urban centers/civilization vs. men/wilderness/savagery vibe to most of them. (The third, to be precise, is about a world where a plague killed off all the men. Oh, and of course, there's Y: The Last Man as well. So, four.) With the exception of the graphic novel, the three others were written by women in the late 1980s to early 1990s.

Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

[Samantha van Buuren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where the hell is this book? Why have I never seen it before on Instagram or in the Facebook groups? Or on a book shelf in book shops? How can it be possible that someone read this and didn't want to scream from the roof tops about it?!

This book follows three main characters. Laissa, a young woman living in one of many large cities which house only women. Arvil, a young man living outside of these cities with all other men, who believe that the world is ruled by The Goddess residing in the cities they are barred from. And Birana. A woman punished for her mother's crime by being sent out of the city to die amongst the men in the wild.

The world building of this dystopian science fiction alone is fascinating. Women took control of the Earth after men destroyed it trying to kill each other, but unfortunately they need to keep populating the earth. So they call the men to the wall that keeps them out of the cities. The men go believing they've been called by a goddess, and they leave their seed behind after being 'blessed' by the Lady. Baby girls are kept in the cities. Baby boys are kept until they're a few years old before having their minds wiped and being sent out to the men. They view sexual relationships between men and women as perverse. Women only love women and the men love each other... And the Lady.

Thankfully I no longer know anyone who would say that same sex relationships are wrong, though I know not all the world agrees. But this book is a complete reversal of our previously held view of sexual relationships, which I know still would have been the socially accepted opinion when this book was published in the 80's. So I love that this narrative makes the reader question that. I'm a cisgender straight woman and it felt bezar to have mixed gender relationships reviled and perceived as 'wrong.' I hope this part of the story made a few homophobic readers rethink their beliefs.

The book also asks many more difficult questions. Questions about the dangers of blindly following a religion as the men we're not permitted to ask questions and think for themselves. About a human's ability to control their impulses. As, despite being conditioned to worship the Goddess, the men are also conditioned to believe she will 'bless' them, which is their word for sex and orgasm. So when they come across a woman, Birana after she was sent out, they grow to believe that she owes them sex and they get slowly angrier and more violent when this doesn't happen. The presence of a woman has the same effect on more than one group of males throughout the book.

Of course they believe this because they're conditioned to. But they're also conditioned to respect the Lady and forcing themselves on her is not respectful. They live without women and yet they still force themselves on each other also. This is used as evidence for their lack of control and civility by the women and as an argument to leave the men separated from them. In this world the men are not aware of how new people are made, so can the impulse to spread their seed be so ingrained that they seek to do so even not knowing why?

There's also a moment in the book where Birana and Arvil find a group of men who have a few women with them! Their ancestor was sent out and joined a group of men, giving them children to grow their 'band'. What is fascinating about this is that they have reverted to the traditional male and female roles we unfortunately know so well. The men hunt, the women gather and have the children while serving the men and being forced to have sex on demand. Does this suggest that this will always happen? That men using their strength and propensity for violence will dominate the women unless women brainwash them into otherwise?

Thankfully we are a lot closer to equality then we used to be, but I have never understood how the person who bears the children is so disrespected and perceived as the less valuable.

The structure of this society, and every issue explored above, is questioned when Birana and Arvil begin to fall in love with each other. Their romance is so innocent but a struggle for both as they fight against their perceived truth. Birana believes her feelings are wrong and she should be disgusted. Arvil struggles with his religion being destroyed and being one amongst many who want more from Birana than friendship.

The three main characters are so well developed, helped by the narrative switching between them throughout the book. We get to see into each of their minds and experience the story from their point of view. We are also introduced to each character before things begin to change. We see how they lived their lives before they started asking questions. And I rooted for all three of them, which was difficult when they seemed to want opposite things... But I found it impossible not to, knowing exactly why they acted the way they did!

I loved every single page of this book. I was so completely invested in the story and the characters, every shocking twist and turn they experienced, that I made myself read slower because I didn't want it to end. Ultimately it ended far too quickly for my liking but the ending, while heartbreaking from one point of view, was satisfying and perfect from others.

This book is fascinating, unpredictable, heartbreaking, mind blowing and so well written! My edition has quite a few editing issues but, shockingly for me, I didn't care! The book was too good for it to matter. It's intelligent, thought provoking and absolutely worthy of the essay I've just written about it.

If you enjoy science fiction, or dystopian fiction, this book is an absolute must read! And honestly I think if you're a human being it's worth reading anyway!
This book has been added to my all time favourites list and I look forward to my many future rereads.

[slowtime · Rating 2 out of 5]

I might have loved this if I'd read it in its historical context, but as a feminist and sci fi fan in 2016, it was a hard slog. There are characters, and they do develop, but it reads much more as a vehicle for expressing a set of (outdated) ideas about men and women than it does as a book about people. Contrast it with Nicola Griffith's excellent "Ammonite" to see how you might explore a single-gender society and also write a beautiful story about people, rather than a stiff narrative about ideas.

Edited to add: On further thought, would historical context have helped? It wouldn't have fixed the lack of dimensional characters, and I'm not convinced it would have helped the gender politics, either. The book describes a world in which women protect themselves from men by keeping men dependent on sex with women. (Because if men have access to female bodies, they are physiologically dependent on having sex with those bodies. Of course.) But the female bodies in this case are super sophisticated VR - the women themselves are all lesbian, and unlike the men (who have sex with each other when they're not getting "blessed" by the VR ladies), they are not physiologically dependent on sex with men. Rather, they're repulsed by it. So the women are just using sex to wield power. Was that really a sophisticated feminist line of thought in 1986?

A big part of what ultimately repulsed me was the way the relationship between the male and female leads developed. The ultimate "revolutionary" takeaway from this book was supposed to be the concept of truly equal partnership between men and women, including truly mutual, equally pleasurable sex. Except the male lead (Arvil) WOULD NOT STOP badgering the female lead (Birana) until she gave in and slept with him. She told him over and over and over again that she didn't want to, to the point that she had to concoct excuses that she was then forced to defend when he saw the cracks in them. When they finally do it for the first time, it's very much a case of her giving in to the inevitable, instead of her doing something she genuinely wants to do. She has started to feel some real attraction towards him, but she is not at the point that he demands she be at. They start to do it, it's great, but then she freaks out and they fight, and then she relents and they finish. She bleeds. How revolutionary.

From that point on her desire and consent seem real enough, so okay. But she had to be coerced, and he couldn't just fucking chill because physiological dependence on heterosexual sex.

Oh yeah, for all the same-sex sex relationships that are mentioned, there next to no references to same sex life partnerships. The implication is that the lifelong partner bond is a hetero thing. Again: how revolutionary.

TL;DR: I thought more about this book overnight and woke up mad.

[Jessie Potts · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm torn. I enjoyed this book and felt like there were a lot of good parts and aspects that made it an enjoyable dystopian/alternate future novel. At the same time, it bothered me that this was called a feminist sci-fi book. Just because women are in charge does not make it a feminist book, and there wasn't enough sci-fi gadgets/space exploring to really make me feel like this should be in the sci-fi genre. We have scanners and gene maps now, ok so their ships were floating and round, but still we don't even get a good description to really wet the sci-fi wants.

Ultimately love won, ultimately it was shown that it could be possible for men and women to coexist after the separating, but there weren't any feminist themes. Birana was weak, constantly shown as physically inferior to the men. It also bothered me that it highlighted a hetero-normative relationship above all else. This wouldn't be such an issue if there was more love shown between the women in the city or the men outside. But men were still seen as brutal and 'taking younger boys' and all good and pure love between the women themselves or the men were all off page or 'told as a story' to Laissa, and therefore glossed over. It was even the love Tulan (spelling? I listened on Audible) felt for Arvil that ultimately betrayed Birana and Arvil. Again, focusing on the hetero-normative. The love between Liassa and Zorene (again I apologize with spelling) was so fade to black, while there was an almost weirdly intense detailing between Arvil and Birana.

Again while this isn't a bad book at all, I feel like expectations were placed on it by labeling it as feminist sci-fi, and ultimately it left me feeling unsatisfied.

[Dana Quadri · Rating 4 out of 5]

At its core, this is great story telling. details are rich. nothing is cliche or expected. it's a love story without the typical turns or ends. quite frankly it's very real which is strange in a science fiction setting. but then.... then this book deals with so much more. not just feminism. but politics. government control with almost a 1984-esque feel. sexual identity and orientation. the stark contrast of nature and technology. the separation of men and women becomes more than a difference in gender but the societies become symbols of different points of time and societal development. lots and lots of interesting things on religion. it really makes you question how ancient cultures worshiped and why. this book is rich in discussion topics that really challenge our modern day norms.

[Kay Baird · Rating 2 out of 5]

People in this world normally have only homosexual relationships, but the two main characters discover heterosexual love. Descriptions of their love-making are explicit and I enjoyed them but they didn't turn me on. Their struggle with the sex while finding their caring for each other ... was sweet as well as emotionally painful. No descriptions of single-sex love, except for passing references. One passing reference however did turn me on, when the male protagonist muses on the "sharper" joys of loving a man: it was that word "sharper" that turned me on.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magical storytelling

I am retired now and catching up on my classic science fiction reading. I wish I had read this 20 years ago. Told from multiple perspectives, paced beautifully and with a little plot twist at the end, The Shore of Women is at its core a love story. But there is no fairy tale ending, no Cinderella, no Snow White, in this tale. It is the story of a man and a woman trying to survive in a brutal world not of their making. This is another book that anyone who likes great science fiction should have on their reading list.

[Rachelle Rachelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had me feeling a certain way. I think a lot of it has to do with me turning 30 this year, my sister whom I'm very close to is having her first child, and the world is falling apart around us. I guess it made me think of my womanhood, what it means to myself and to others, and biologically. It makes me uncomfortable to be reduced to my body and to inflict that upon others and to be put into Birana and Arvil's situations made me feel sad and powerless, even in my own life.

Men have been cast out of society due to their naturally wicked tendencies and women have their own society that is full of advanced technology, disease free, and war free. The men live outside the walled cities in primitive states. The women have set up shrines and use technology to listen in and watch the men to control them. When their populations get too big, too idealistic, too rebellious against "the Lady", they wipe them out. They never have a chance to evolve past basic hunter and gatherer lifestyles. They worship "the Lady" never really understanding that they are humans, like them. The men worship the women, and the women are deathly afraid of the men.

I really enjoyed this book despite the major flaws that it had. It's obviously interesting to read about an all female society but I had a lot of issues with how women were portrayed in this. Instead of just completely wiping out men altogether, the women use the men for their sperm to continue having children, casting out the boys and wiping their memories when they turn old enough to be without their mothers. This deeply traumatizes a lot of mothers (as it did to Laissa's mother with her son Button) but they fear men and repeating the past so much that they are very strict about how they view all men and the women who become compassionate towards them. But, couldn't they have just raised a new generation of boys in their own image? A lot of this book was based on the concept "not all men". Which it's like yeah, obviously... As a reader, you're clearly supposed to sympathize with Arvil's plight, but I don't get why the women couldn't even run an experiment on raising a trial group of boys to be compassionate, kind, nurturing, etc.. It seemed like the women were just straight up terrified of anything to do with men. Does the author see women as so inherently weak and scared that they couldn't even risk that? I wasn't exactly sure how I was supposed to see the women in this society. I didn't exactly view them as strong or intelligent by any means.

For example, is it not a major plot hole to have sent Birana outside the city walls and then she survives and then council members freak out because she's a huge liability against them? Why didn't you just imprison her? It seemed like a bad excuse to start the story. Birana could have ended up outside the city due to escaping her punishment. It would have worked a lot better plot wise and made me doubt how intelligent this group of women really were. Or was it just bad writing?

The characters also talked a lot about how their society had stagnated. There wasn't more to this than the characters offhandedly pointing it out as a consequence of their utopia. I guess I didn't really understand what the problem was with that. Like don't you have everything you need? You've wiped out disease, people live hundreds of years, none of the women were going hungry, there wasn't a scarcity problem. I just didn't really understand the point of including that and having it be used as this awful consequence of having no men and not expanding on it all. Once again, was this the author's viewpoint on women or just bad writing?

[Bill Dauster · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Shore of Women is a classic of feminist science fiction, imagining a post-apocalyptic world run by women, where men are relegated to a barbarian existence beyond the bounds of civilization. Women maintain their hegemony through technological superiority, a religion that venerates the Lady, and harsh enforcement of the dominant ideology. Then the female metropolis exiles two women to fend for themselves (and presumably die) in the hazard-filled land of men. Sargent tells the tale in alternating voices of men and women, testing our preconceptions about gender roles as the protagonists encounter various permutations of relationships between the genders. Sargent also explores how characters deal with a faith that comes under question with discovery of greater understanding of how the world really works. The book provokes consideration of how men and women treat other, and why people cling to stereotypical gender roles. Some readers may be offended by explicit discussion of sexuality.

[David Nix · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel left me very contemplative for some time after reading the final words. In a bold undertaking as a storyteller, Ms. Sargent tells of a distant future where war-weary women have exiled men to live as savages outside the walls of women-only futuristic cities, taking reproductive material only as needed to keep the species alive. The story follows an exiled woman, Birana, who forms what is considered an impossible and disgusting bond with a man named Arvil - one of love.

The story is slow in places, but those moments reflect the monotony of life in the wild. *Spoiler* When sexual relations develop between Birana and Arvil, the author does not hold back. Her descriptions are graphic, although not gratuitous. In the end, though, the story gave me what I crave in every novel that I read: an abiding concern for the characters, and a truth to ponder that is larger than my limited world. Kudos to Pamela Sargent for such a bold story with such a profound message.

[sweet pea · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's apparent that i can't read enough post-apocalyptic literature. this novel is set in a world much like the (later) The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper. womyn and men live separately, with womyn (seemingly) in control. The Shore of Women is possibly the most intriguing battle of the sexes i have ever read. the first half shows womyn firmly in power with the men savage little puppets. the second half shows how tenuous women's control could be and how savage. ultimately, it's unclear who the winner is, or perhaps only when working together can humanity be victorious. the second part of the novel had me questioning if it could even be considered feminist. although, the questions the novel raises are intriguing enough to provoke debate. kind of wish i had a feminist science fiction book club. not that i need anything else to do.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was something really captivating about this story. It’s an adventure journey story and the main characters all go through their respective arc as the story progressives and we learn about this version of the future. A tad too long but it does provide some interesting reflections on gender bendy notions and constructs as well as power. Im surprised this hasn’t been turned into a dramatic series or film given the YA characters and journey. I would recommend reading this if you like your sci-fi to touch on gender politics, however whether you agree with the politics or not is a different matter. At the end of the day it pushes a strong message of equality- that whether men are patriarchs or womyn are ruling the world and dominating over men, that it will be shitty ongoing cycles and equality might be the only way out, which is a message I really get behind.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dystopia, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic and so on are not just overused terms in describing contemporary sci-fi/speculate fiction, they are almost always used incorrectly. Apocalypse does not mean the end of the world; it means the end of the world as we know it. 'Singularity' is the closest contemporary synonym. Dystopia is not just a bad world. Dystopia is the use of utopian elements to create undesirable outcome. You know Huxley's 'Brave New World.' You don't know his utopia 'Island.' The structural elements of the utopia and dystopia are the same.

Sargent has created a true dystopia in The Shore of Women. Gender segregation, as is sometimes necessary, as is sometimes desired as a mechanism of justice, is both in this story. It is also horrible. It is utopian and dysfunctional.

[Damon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hate that it was labled as Feminist Fiction.

This story made me think of a version the Adam And Eve story and of the movie The Blue Lagoon. I reads like fiction but is an essay on the animal instincts we have and how societal norms force us into non natural patterns.

[Persephonebook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un bon 3,75 / 5 ; une roman déroutant et qui fait réfléchir sur les relations hommes femmes. Au début j’ai eu peur du point de vue défendu du roman qui aurait put décrédibiliser les combats féministes cependant l’autrice a su y apporter beaucoup de nuance et de réflexion ouverte. La plume et la maîtrise de l’autrice sur l’évolution de ses personnages est fort appréciable cependant j’ai eu un moment donné ou j’ai eu du mal à avancé car le rythme traîner en longueur selon moi. De plus certaines scènes m’ont assez trigger donc si c’est sujet ( abus physique, mental, torture psychologique) vous trigger je vous déconseille ce récit. Il s’agit d’une dystopie maîtrisée que je vous conseille si les sujets tel que le féminisme, masculinité toxique et écologique vous intéressent et bien foncer.

[Tyler Hutson · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my new favorite books:) Pamela Sargent is one of my new favorite feminist writers because she gives multiple perspectives on why no matter what the gender structure is and who’s in power conflict and sometimes violence still happen. I wanna keep it vague and hope that more people will read it but I loved this book for exploring homosexuality, gender, and how power changes with time. Yadayadyad READ THIS BOOK

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? (from the opening line of the radio show The Shadow). In The Shore of Women, Pamela Sargent takes on the issue of the evil of men and a lot of evil there is. Along with this exploration, however, questions about the evilness of women emerge as well.

The idea of men and women living separately has been explored many times before, from the legend of Sappho and Lesbos to, my favorite, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Since men are violent, warring, controlling, and subjugating of women, wouldn’t women be better off without them.

Sargent’s dystopian novel was published in 1986 but is as current today, perhaps more so, that when it was published. After a world war wipes out civilization the few remaining humans survive in underground bunkers. They explore whether or not the world is safe to inhabit by sending out some men. It doesn’t take them long to decide that sending out all of the men will allow them to create a female utopia.

Sargent’s book is built around the lives of three main characters; Laissa, Arvil, and Birana and the story is told through their eyes in alternating chapters. The maximum sentence the judiciary in the city of women can impose is to banish a woman out into the world of men. There they will quickly die of hunger or be killed by the savage men who roam the world in hunter/gatherer packs. The Shore of Women is the story of Birana’s expulsion, survival, and what she learns about the nature of men and women.

There is little hard science in this book. The city is run by some type of Artificial Intelligence which allows the women to run all sorts of advanced devices and machines. The how and why of these inventions are not explored and not really necessary for the story line. Just know that women control the technology and men are savages living in a dystopian world. To control the men there is the all powerful goddess who the men must worship and adore.

The question of the inner nature of women and men and relationships between them is the central theme of this book. It is also, however, an exciting story. We have intrigue, battles, love, sex, mystery, betrayal, friendship, and loss. The writing is excellent, the characters multidimensional, and the plot line engaging. I was hooked from the first pages.

[Cissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this novel, at least as an engaging, "feminist" SF novel.

It's clearly a product of its time (1986, about 30 years ago): but even then, gender essentialism was only a small part of feminist thought and theory. It's vital to the premises of this novel, though.

Women and men have no actual contact with each other, and both have weird ideas of the Other. The women have claimed tech, and are stagnating in their walled citadels; meanwhile the men revel in life "nasty, brutish and short" outside. While the overall story arc depicts a small personal rapproachment, in general everyone on all sides stays resolutely gender-essentialist.

Now, this does mean that it might be an interesting book to teach in a feminist lit class, in which one would examine the premises- both of sex/gender, social status, etc.- in terms of a broader view of what humans are capable of. The book definitely raises some interesting questions, but it seems to me that they are mostly unaddressed, even in subtext.

Another flaw is that it went on far too long, and was quite repetitive. This may have been intentional, but it made the reading more of a slog that it could have been.

It did not help that none of the first-person protagonists were especially engaging, nor were most of the others. Our male protag flew into scary rages at the least hint of being thwarted; the females occasionally defied the powers that be, but then resigned themselves to oppression of one kind or another. Not a very hopeful look at humans, though possibly accurate...

Not recommended, except maybe in a book discussion or class context.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many who gave this negative reviews, I at first thought, “how is this feminist?” The world-view appears to be similar to that of the so-called incels. Men outside the home, nasty, brutish and short-lived, so that women can preserve civilization, or just gently exchange handicrafts. I also questioned the sexuality at first, like, oh here we go, it’s going to be better to be straight and there are no transgender people. But as I read on, pulled by the exciting narrative, I could see how the character of Arvil is meant as an extraordinary example in a world with limited room for critical thinking. Compared with other second-wave feminist SF, this was probably the least essentialist. I don’t think the message is that it’s better to be hetero, rather that a heterosexual relationship is possible if the man is capable of it. The relationship between Laissa and Zoreen is the happy end story, and they are lesbian. Compared with The Gate To Women’s Country, this work is light-years ahead. I have been reading bell hooks’ The Will to Change, and that might be why I saw this as a feminist book demonstrating how men might find a way to be capable of real love, as opposed to simply treasuring a sexual partner / co-worker. The story in here of the headman’s reaction when the woman on the island dies puts Arvil in that kind of light. I was greatly moved reading this and had to fight back tears on the 43 streetcar on Hernalserhauptstrasse. The Shore of Women is a great adventure story, with a well-told romance, and some feminist messaging and I would recommend it to all fans of the genre.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the recent popularity of feminist dystopia, I thought this book warranted a re-read. I read it in high school, without a critical eye, but it made an impression. I never forgot the title, the author, the basic plot structure and premise, and I have found myself referencing it regularly over the years.

In a word, this book is evocative! It posits questions about religion, nature v. nurture, essentialism, maleness and femaleness, cultural conditioning, oral history, brainwashing, love, violence, rape culture, history, exploration, the list goes on and on. I'm especially impressed by the way the author manages to walk some fine lines so that we can't say for sure what are her answers to some of these questions. The main narrative leads to some conclusions, but there is a rebuttal nestled somewhere else in the story for nearly every one. It's not hard to pick on a couple plot holes, and it is a little dated now in its vocabulary and ideas. For example, same-sex love is a foundational feature of the world Sargent has built, but she overlooks the existence of trans people. It was worth the re-read though, as it stands up very well now, 34 years after its publication. It is impeccably structured, all of the plot pieces move smoothly and in unison, and its 588 pages never dragged.

[Reet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't say this book is perfect, but I'm still going to give it 5 🌟. It's about a land, probably north America, centuries after the nuclear apocalypse. When the Earth seemed healed enough, the survivors made their way from the underground shelters and began to create civilization again. Women gathered together, separating themselves from men, in the belief that men could not be trusted with the reins of leadership again, lest their tendency towards violence destroy the world again. So women built enclosed cities, leaving men to fight for survival in the wildernesses outside. They would variously be summoned to the walls to contribute their sperm, but were kept in ignorance of their purpose, believing the women to be aspects of the Goddess. Obviously, as other reviewers have pointed out, this is not really feminist literature, just because it has lesbians in it. Still, thoroughly enjoyable for characterization, world-building, and seeing men in the story get treated in some ways, the way they treat us.