Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - Woman on the Edge of Time

I loved this book. I thought Piercy did an amazing job of portraying the horrors of institutionalization for the supposedly insane in the 70s. Poor women of color being committed because they refuse to accept the dirth of power they've been allotted. This book gives a glimpse into a poor middle aged latina woman's life without being patronizing or martyring her.

The themes of time travel and utopia were, in my opinion, the weakest part of the book. But Piercy's bravery at imagining a different world and exploring it through the main character's eyes makes up for the moments it felt weak. She is an astounding writer of the real, tangible world and a decent sci-fi writer.

As a woman this book felt so important. It is a glimpse into the battles that other women had to endure to be given basic human rights and decency. The fight that we are still fighting for bodily atonomy and being seen as a whole person. And the fight we as a society have around the persistent cruelties of our class system. This is a book for feminists, communists, anyone who has been institutionalized, and for anyone who wants more about how we get free.

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mar's review

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challenging dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

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iheartmuseums's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This was a slow start for me, but about a third of the way in I wanted to keep going and see what came of the story. Ultimately it was partly hopeful about what a good future could be for the world, and partly heartbreaking because so little has changed since this book was written regarding how we treat the already downtrodden.

I know the brief chapter where Connie

projects into a different future was terrifying given how controlled the world is by class and technology right now.

My feeling is this is worth the read for the unique perspective and approach to "time travel" and I really enjoyed the intro in the 2016 edition that I read.

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briartherose's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

4.0

A few bullet-point thoughts:

This is a well-written, creative, diverse novel. I really enjoyed reading it. The mental hospital scenes in particular are powerful, but gritty and uncompromising. They provide an often jaw-dropping portrait of life as a impoverished woman of colour in mid-20th century America.
The Mattapoisett scenes, while a creative vision of the future, often seemed tangential (and more than a little didactic). The reason for Connie being transported to their timeline isn't made clear until well past the halfway point, encouraging the reader to interpret them as Connie's coping mechanism, or hallucination. Which I don't think the author intended.
However, the brief scenes in the 'bad future' were fascinatingly horrible. Is their world of exploitative, unpleasantly violent media that far removed from our own?
A side note about the gender politics of the novel: in Mattapoisett everyone is referred to by the gender-neutral pronoun 'person', or 'per', yet the author insists on referring to those same characters as male or female. Even in-universe someone refers to their people as 'biological males and females'. Either the author didn't really understand the purpose of gender-neutral pronouns, or she was mocking them for it: whichever way it was, it comes off awkward. It seems like Piercy was much more comfortable talking about racial politics than gender identity.

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