Reviews

He, She and It by Marge Piercy

vyxter's review

5.0

This is one of my favorite books. I have reread it more times than I can count. I adore it, and recommend it often.

deadnberried's review

3.0

A strong 3.5. I think the pacing and character development could have used some work, but I loved the overlapping stories of the 1600s 'cyborg' and Yod in the book's present. I was raised Christian and know woefully little about Judaism and Jewish culture, so this book was deeply enriching in its glimpse into the depth and breadth of Jewish intellectual/mystical scholarship and historical practice.

haddocks_eyes's review

emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

randalm's review

3.0

I felt this book had two strikes against it, its title and its first chapter. I decided to overlook the former. The latter almost made me put the book down, with its unoriginal vision of a world controlled by a few corporations. It’s not that I disagree with this possibility. I was simply in the mood for something fresher.

However, once past that chapter, the nature of the tale changed and I was hooked. Shira loses custody of her child and leaves her “multi” (multicorporation) to return to the freetown of Tikva, a Jewish, feminist, cooperative enclave. A friend of her family is illegally creating a cyborg to defend the town from the multis. Shira gets involved professionally and then personally with Yod, the cyborg. Woven in book is the tale of the golem of Prague, created long ago to defend the Jewish ghetto from violence. I liked how the two tales ran parallel to each other but would have preferred if the original one by Marge Piercy had varied at the end.

uhm_kai's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

amazing, amazing, amazing 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry

elsafenander's review

challenging sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

hcooper333's review

3.0

An interesting combination of futurism and folk tale, and an imagining of the Jewish diaspora. Ultimately it didn't grab me, though. The characters were flat and the dialogue at times too thick to compensate.

ninafroms's review

3.0

SciFi Jewish Cyborg Romance Dystopian novel. The first 150 pages or so were so good (the part where she is describing the world they live in), but it really dropped off after that. I would recommend the first 150 pages though.

m_e_mackin's review

adventurous emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

rockinstrawberries's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I did enjoy this book a lot. I found it interesting that the author seems to try to convey that humanness is somehow tied to sexuality through the fact that sexuality was a huge theme in this book, and that if a robot has a sexual drive that somehow makes the more human (can't relate, I'm literally asexual). As well, the author seems to be confused on what the definition of autistic is, and can be quite harmful when she repeatedly says that the "autistic cyborgs" must be killed off. Yod is very autistic coded, especially in his early descriptions of what life felt like for him. 

Overall, I really liked the book, even if at times the love story felt a bit forced (and unnatural). It inspired many thought streams about what it means to be a person, or to deserve personhood.