A review by pattydsf
The Longings of Women by Marge Piercy

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.