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A review by llynn66
The Longings of Women by Marge Piercy
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.