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A review by readintotemptation
The Longings of Women by Marge Piercy
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/