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gilmoreguide's review
3.0
Add me ot the list of people who loved this book. I found the characters so identifiable. The homeless situation was especially well done because while it is not something someone with a good job or husband can imagine, it does happen and her characterization of it stayed with me for days.
Yes, the book is long but I thought it was well worth it.
Yes, the book is long but I thought it was well worth it.
dels's review
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
stacymy's review
2.0
I was disappointed in this book. I thought that the story could have been told much more effectively using about 1/3 of the words and details. It took me over a week to read, not because of its length so much as my lack of interest. The storyline of Leila and Becky were interesting but I found myself becoming bored with Mary. I feel like this was an "almost there" book as I think the premise was good but the wordiness and the lack of character-depth was disappointing. I found Leila's extended family to be a superfluous addition to the story and many of the metaphors were borderline juvenile. I know this was the author's attempt to capture the characters' voices, but I think she missed the mark. I gave it 2 stars because I did plow through and finish it, because I wanted to know what happened. Though, since I didn't connect with the characters, I was ambivalent to whether they got divorced or married or killed or put in jail or fired or hired...I was just curious about the plotline, I guess.
tonikayk's review
4.0
Deep character studies of three women. Each facing the difficulty of change and the extremes of handling life. Their lives are connected, yet truly individual. It may be my age, but I felt the closest to Mary and how her difficult life was a proud woman's attempt to survive with some dignity. Interesting stories and twists.
readintotemptation's review
3.0
I was first made aware of Marge Piercy’s work when I saw her novel Woman on the Edge of Time listed as one the great feminist classics in a newspaper article a few years ago. At the time I was reading a great deal of science fiction, mostly by women. I’d worked my way through Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin’s work and was looking for more of the same. I was so blown away by Woman on the Edge of Time that I decided to start hunting out more of Marge Piercy’ work. So far I’ve read Vida, Sex Wars and her poetry collection, The Moon is Always Female.
With so many expectations heaped on poor Marge from yours truly, it was perhaps inevitable that I was going to come across one or two that failed to meet my expectations. The Longings of Women was one. I guess I’ve been spoilt by her other books. I don’t want to put others off from trying it. Perhaps I was simply expecting too much, but my overriding impression after finishing the book was one of dissatisfaction. I felt that somehow I’d been short-changed.
The novel enters around the lives of three characters, Leila a semi-successful academic married to a theatre director with a love of sleeping with his leading ladies. Her story intersects with those of two other characters, Becky Burgess, a woman accused of murdering her husband and the subject of a book Leila hopes to write and Mary Burke, a cleaning lady who works for Leila and who, after the breakdown of her marriage, finds herself homeless. Leila is the pivot around which the other two characters circle and it is through her that we meet these women and learn more about their lives.
If you go into this novel accepting that you’re not going to get an intricately plotted ‘who-done-it’ then you won’t be disappointed. After accepting this I was much more able to step back and look again at the way she approaches not only social issues but also feminist concerns. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that explores the issue of homeless in women in the way I did in this novel.
To read the rest of this review please head over to my blog:
https://simmyandhersimplelife.wordpress.com/2017/03/30/book-review-the-longings-of-women-by-marge-piercy/
With so many expectations heaped on poor Marge from yours truly, it was perhaps inevitable that I was going to come across one or two that failed to meet my expectations. The Longings of Women was one. I guess I’ve been spoilt by her other books. I don’t want to put others off from trying it. Perhaps I was simply expecting too much, but my overriding impression after finishing the book was one of dissatisfaction. I felt that somehow I’d been short-changed.
The novel enters around the lives of three characters, Leila a semi-successful academic married to a theatre director with a love of sleeping with his leading ladies. Her story intersects with those of two other characters, Becky Burgess, a woman accused of murdering her husband and the subject of a book Leila hopes to write and Mary Burke, a cleaning lady who works for Leila and who, after the breakdown of her marriage, finds herself homeless. Leila is the pivot around which the other two characters circle and it is through her that we meet these women and learn more about their lives.
If you go into this novel accepting that you’re not going to get an intricately plotted ‘who-done-it’ then you won’t be disappointed. After accepting this I was much more able to step back and look again at the way she approaches not only social issues but also feminist concerns. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that explores the issue of homeless in women in the way I did in this novel.
To read the rest of this review please head over to my blog:
https://simmyandhersimplelife.wordpress.com/2017/03/30/book-review-the-longings-of-women-by-marge-piercy/
llynn66's review
3.0
Is it possible to like a book when the characters are almost uniformly unpleasant and the writing style can be irritating? Yes! This was a very disorienting book for me, yet I read it compulsively. If there is a category for "feminist soap opera", this title would be in it.
The plot revolves around the lives of 3 women from different generations and social classes whose lives intersect in crisis. Mary is an aging divorcee, formerly part of the more affluent middle class, but thrown into poverty and, eventually, homelessness when her husband leaves her and her children erase her from their lives. Leila is a middle aged professional woman (an academic at a Boston area college) who is in the midst of her own divorce from her chronically unfaithful spouse, Nick. Becky is a younger woman (mid twenties) who has clawed her way out of the working class through hard work and study and. later, through marriage. When Becky's marriage to solidly middle class Terry begins to falter she is thrown into panic at the thought of losing everything she has worked so hard to acquire.
Like so much of what I read in my one Women's Studies course in college, in this world men suck. They are all portrayed as losers...or selfish wankers...or brutal...or stupid...or ineffective. Certainly many men do fit the descriptions of the guys in this book. A few prizes exemplify almost all the crap qualities depicted in Piercy's male characters in one big hunk of human garbage. But it has always struck me as very unbelievable when an author portrays a world where 98% of one gender is beyond redemption. What saved this book for me was that, by and large, the female characters were equally awful..
Leila was the central character and, I believe, she was supposed to be the person the reader would sympathize with and relate to in point of view. Leila had some good qualities...she tried to hold her family together and she was a responsible professional woman. But, oh! The yuppie angst! The naval gazing! The boomeresque self-involvement spun as enlightenment. Leila would go on for paragraphs about how much weight she would shoulder for others...and how much the people around her expected/demanded...and how painfully difficult it is to be "the strong one, the stable one." Lord, don''t I know it, lady. But shut up already! Either be the stable one and help your friends or tell them to back off and give you some "me time"! But don't bludgeon us all over the head with how wonderful you are, while giving off the scent of resentment with each do-gooding act you perform.
Becky was portrayed in the fashion my despised Generation X is often characterized by older writers. Becky comes off as a slick materialist...clever and "sharp" more then bright and "intellectual" and ruthless in her ambitions to gain fame and the good life. The persona of Becky is allowed some of the reader's compassion, however, when her back story is revealed -- a hardscrabble childhood in an over crowded and dirty home with the usual downtrodden-but-kindly ethnic parents.
Mary was the most interesting and admirable character, in my estimation. She exemplifies the biggest horror story in America...the unacknowledged concept that is very possible to become downwardly mobile to the point of falling out of the middle class and into abject poverty, through a small series of unfortunate events beyond one's control (especially if you are female.) We just don't believe anyone ever falls down in our society...unless they "make bad decisions" (drugs, booze, being unfortunate enough to pick the wrong spouse at age 22). Mary's character refutes that delusion and offers the reader a nice hot cup of dismal reality.
This book was like a good Woody Allen movie. The characters are neurotic and horrid people. Listening to people like Leila and Nick converse with one another makes you want to withdraw permanently from the human race and embrace misanthropy rather than endure anymore psychobabbling ME-isms disguised as "insight". Yet you watch (and read). You are mesmerized and compelled. And the plot is good! You want to know how it ends. It all ties together. And each chapter leaves you ready for more drama. If you are not such a snob that you cannot admit that a good ol' women-driven soap plot is, at it's best, a wildly entertaining thing, you can admit that this story was a very readable page turner from soup to nuts.
The plot revolves around the lives of 3 women from different generations and social classes whose lives intersect in crisis. Mary is an aging divorcee, formerly part of the more affluent middle class, but thrown into poverty and, eventually, homelessness when her husband leaves her and her children erase her from their lives. Leila is a middle aged professional woman (an academic at a Boston area college) who is in the midst of her own divorce from her chronically unfaithful spouse, Nick. Becky is a younger woman (mid twenties) who has clawed her way out of the working class through hard work and study and. later, through marriage. When Becky's marriage to solidly middle class Terry begins to falter she is thrown into panic at the thought of losing everything she has worked so hard to acquire.
Like so much of what I read in my one Women's Studies course in college, in this world men suck. They are all portrayed as losers...or selfish wankers...or brutal...or stupid...or ineffective. Certainly many men do fit the descriptions of the guys in this book. A few prizes exemplify almost all the crap qualities depicted in Piercy's male characters in one big hunk of human garbage. But it has always struck me as very unbelievable when an author portrays a world where 98% of one gender is beyond redemption. What saved this book for me was that, by and large, the female characters were equally awful..
Leila was the central character and, I believe, she was supposed to be the person the reader would sympathize with and relate to in point of view. Leila had some good qualities...she tried to hold her family together and she was a responsible professional woman. But, oh! The yuppie angst! The naval gazing! The boomeresque self-involvement spun as enlightenment. Leila would go on for paragraphs about how much weight she would shoulder for others...and how much the people around her expected/demanded...and how painfully difficult it is to be "the strong one, the stable one." Lord, don''t I know it, lady. But shut up already! Either be the stable one and help your friends or tell them to back off and give you some "me time"! But don't bludgeon us all over the head with how wonderful you are, while giving off the scent of resentment with each do-gooding act you perform.
Becky was portrayed in the fashion my despised Generation X is often characterized by older writers. Becky comes off as a slick materialist...clever and "sharp" more then bright and "intellectual" and ruthless in her ambitions to gain fame and the good life. The persona of Becky is allowed some of the reader's compassion, however, when her back story is revealed -- a hardscrabble childhood in an over crowded and dirty home with the usual downtrodden-but-kindly ethnic parents.
Mary was the most interesting and admirable character, in my estimation. She exemplifies the biggest horror story in America...the unacknowledged concept that is very possible to become downwardly mobile to the point of falling out of the middle class and into abject poverty, through a small series of unfortunate events beyond one's control (especially if you are female.) We just don't believe anyone ever falls down in our society...unless they "make bad decisions" (drugs, booze, being unfortunate enough to pick the wrong spouse at age 22). Mary's character refutes that delusion and offers the reader a nice hot cup of dismal reality.
This book was like a good Woody Allen movie. The characters are neurotic and horrid people. Listening to people like Leila and Nick converse with one another makes you want to withdraw permanently from the human race and embrace misanthropy rather than endure anymore psychobabbling ME-isms disguised as "insight". Yet you watch (and read). You are mesmerized and compelled. And the plot is good! You want to know how it ends. It all ties together. And each chapter leaves you ready for more drama. If you are not such a snob that you cannot admit that a good ol' women-driven soap plot is, at it's best, a wildly entertaining thing, you can admit that this story was a very readable page turner from soup to nuts.
flamingandromeda's review
I read this slowly over about eight months....it's about three different women, each who pretends in some way. Leila pretends her marriage is ok, Becky pretends she's living her ideal life and Mary pretends she's not the homeless woman she is. Leila is the central character who is known by both women.
pattydsf's review
3.0
It has been years since I read a novel by Marge Piercy and I am still trying to decide if ending the unintentional drought was a good thing or not. I really like Piercy's poems and often read the poems in the anthologies I own. I just hadn't made time for her novels for awhile and I had enjoyed the ones I had read earlier, especially Gone to Soldiers.
Longings of Women is set in Boston, in a world that I imagine is much like Piercy's own life. The main character is a woman very involved in academics and good causes. Her life has been careening along on the same path for many years, but a number of things happen in this novel to take her off track.
I like the way Piercy uses different narrators and time periods to move her narrative forward. I like a couple of the characters - a lot. My biggest problem is that this book seemed very much like other books I had read by Piercy. I guess I believe that Piercy has political reasons for her books and those reasons have not changed. That is likely much more my problem than Piercy's.
Longings of Women is set in Boston, in a world that I imagine is much like Piercy's own life. The main character is a woman very involved in academics and good causes. Her life has been careening along on the same path for many years, but a number of things happen in this novel to take her off track.
I like the way Piercy uses different narrators and time periods to move her narrative forward. I like a couple of the characters - a lot. My biggest problem is that this book seemed very much like other books I had read by Piercy. I guess I believe that Piercy has political reasons for her books and those reasons have not changed. That is likely much more my problem than Piercy's.
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