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A review by steveatwaywords
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
This is my first novel of Piercy's after many years of loving her poetry. And for many reasons, I was rewarded for this sustained immersion into her thinking.
While this book falls into the category of science fiction, it is better understood as speculative fiction (and social commentary). A woman who is forced into mental institutions (in the early 1970s) is able to time travel to a future utopic society. To be sure, the utopia has come about only following the worst practices of apocalyptic consumption-capitalism: it struggles in the aftermath; but its people have learned an ethic (and matched morality) about sustainability and life which--for its time, especially--is hugely forward-looking, especially in terms of gender, sexuality, and child development. These sections, coupled with a future language which is at once as familiar as it is paradigm-shifting, make the book a valuable experience.
Where Piercy has more trouble is in sustaining the story and its significance across past and future. There are some tempting discussions about the malleability of time, of the power of "responders" like our protagonist Connie, and of the responsibility we have to ourselves. Implementing these future-thinking ideas into the 1970s, however, was often forced and at times neglected or forgotten. The resolution to the novel feels equally . . . irresolute in this way. Yes, our Connie grows into her moment, but its nature is quickly narrated and left unexamined. One wonders if she needed "the future" at all to enact it and what might we have said had she done so. (And this is not because the novel is brief; its nearly 400 pages with long asides into the descriptions of meals, bandages, and the biographies of minor characters.)
It is, in part, the nature of a lot of science fiction from this era to offer its themes through "heady" trips into other-spaces; and readers are often left to make of the experiences what they will. I'm thinking of almost all of Huxley, a lot of Heinlein, Daniel Keyes, Harlan Ellison, and even some of LeGuin. In this sense, Piercy's novel has like company. But I could not help thinking that its resolution fell somewhat short of the author's future vision.
While this book falls into the category of science fiction, it is better understood as speculative fiction (and social commentary). A woman who is forced into mental institutions (in the early 1970s) is able to time travel to a future utopic society. To be sure, the utopia has come about only following the worst practices of apocalyptic consumption-capitalism: it struggles in the aftermath; but its people have learned an ethic (and matched morality) about sustainability and life which--for its time, especially--is hugely forward-looking, especially in terms of gender, sexuality, and child development. These sections, coupled with a future language which is at once as familiar as it is paradigm-shifting, make the book a valuable experience.
Where Piercy has more trouble is in sustaining the story and its significance across past and future. There are some tempting discussions about the malleability of time, of the power of "responders" like our protagonist Connie, and of the responsibility we have to ourselves. Implementing these future-thinking ideas into the 1970s, however, was often forced and at times neglected or forgotten. The resolution to the novel feels equally . . . irresolute in this way. Yes, our Connie grows into her moment, but its nature is quickly narrated and left unexamined. One wonders if she needed "the future" at all to enact it and what might we have said had she done so. (And this is not because the novel is brief; its nearly 400 pages with long asides into the descriptions of meals, bandages, and the biographies of minor characters.)
It is, in part, the nature of a lot of science fiction from this era to offer its themes through "heady" trips into other-spaces; and readers are often left to make of the experiences what they will. I'm thinking of almost all of Huxley, a lot of Heinlein, Daniel Keyes, Harlan Ellison, and even some of LeGuin. In this sense, Piercy's novel has like company. But I could not help thinking that its resolution fell somewhat short of the author's future vision.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Forced institutionalization and Medical trauma
Moderate: Medical content, Domestic abuse, Grief, Confinement, Panic attacks/disorders, Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Sexual content, Abandonment, Addiction, Death, Drug abuse, Physical abuse, Violence, and War