What do you think?
Rate this book
Woman on the Edge of Time
After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie Ramos is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a utopian future of sexual and racial equality and environmental harmony.
But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a dystopian society of grotesque exploitation. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow...
But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a dystopian society of grotesque exploitation. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow...
376 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1976
About the author
Marge Piercy
104 books865 followersMarge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,358 reviews
August 12, 2013
It’s interesting how the lens of three decades of life experience can sharpen the focus of certain stories—and even parts of stories. When I first read Woman on the Edge of Time not long after it was published (1976), I was barely into my 20s and already a reliable cog in the corporate machine. At that time, I enjoyed Marge Piercy’s story of a 37-year-old Chicana woman in New York whose already-complicated life takes a twist for the bizarre when she begins to communicate with an ambassador from the year 2137, but I found little to identify with personally beyond the yearning for a more egalitarian, utopian world. I read the book again when I was around the age of the main character, Consuela Ramos, and found considerably more to love—and ponder. I had naively thought when I first read the book in the late 70s that sexism, racism, and ethnocentrism were on the wane—outmoded concepts that were slowly but undeniably going the way of other counterproductive human behaviors like burning witches at the stake or equating nonconformity with insanity. Silly me. The 80s and 90s taught me otherwise, so that by the time I dipped into Woman in the late 90s, I realized how prescient some of Piercy’s observations were. And when I reread the book yet again recently, I finally found the story far richer and more nuanced than in any of my earlier readings.
I am a gay single mother in my 50s who, after a severe depressive episode, has seen the inside of a mental institution. The short-term unit at McLean is a country club for harmless sadsacks compared with the more Cuckoo’s Nest setting Connie finds herself in, to be sure, but it’s a nuthouse all the same. So during this reading I found myself especially attuned to Connie’s treatment by “the system”—the way her story of the actions that led to her second commitment are ignored and read as denial and evidence of illness; the emphasis on orderly obeisance and lecturing over individual therapy and understanding; the easy assumption that “noncompliance” is dangerous and must be crushed. To be fair, I did not encounter frightened, uncaring staff during my brief stay, but it is still true that patients rarely if ever see actual doctors. At best they see counselors in group settings, but most interactions are with nurses, technicians, and pharmacists—just as they were in Piercy’s 1976 hospital.
Those insights were critical in this recent reading of the book. The first time I read the book (I was a kid, remember!), I tended to believe that Ramos was indeed schizophrenic, and that she had created a very inventive but allegorically instructional alternative world to hide out in to escape the roughness of the real world. After the second reading I had no doubt that she had in fact been communicating with and visiting the world in 2137, and that her brave actions at the end of the book played a critical role in averting a disastrous future. But after this latest most recent reading, I have a different conclusion: it doesn’t matter. The book works either way, because it is above all character study, a deeply introspective look at community, evolution, survival, identity, and connectedness. Past reviewers have called the future world a “feminist utopia,” but this is hardly accurate. What they seem to be responding to is the idea that this future shows a world in which capitalism is not the driving force. It’s true: men are not in charge. But neither are women. Everyone is on charge, in turn. It’s not even socialism but communal living taken to a grand scale and extreme. It’s a world where everyone matters and is listened to, which is why it is important that Connie is not just some average housewife or middle management executive or a neurosurgeon: Connie is the epitome of the voiceless, ignored part of society—the people we brush off as “nuts” and consider less worthy of our full attention. This is not to say that Piercy is suggesting that everyone wearing a foil hat is tuned into reality and we are all fools for thinking them crazy; rather, she is contrasting what can happen when one set of people assumes graceless power over another and refuses to listen, to allow them to contribute or make their own sometimes-bad choices. It’s about what could happen if we accept totalitarianism.
As an aside, I was amused to see that several reviewers considered the book dated—not the “present” period, mind you, which they accepted as a quaint period piece, but the imagined future of 2137. What we all forget too easily is that in the time since this book was written we have been barraged by a high-tech cinematic view of the future that almost invariably depicts our fate as increasingly electronic, automated, and conformist. Woman was written after the original-Star Trek series but predates the movies, the spin-off, and flashy movies like the Star Wars, Alien, and Terminator franchises. And the book helped spawn a generation of the alternative cyberpunk view of the broken, dystopian future that gave us Bladerunner and Mad Max. But realistically, none of us knows what the world will be like 125 years from now. Would we have imagined in 1887 that we could cruise down a highway at 80 mph talking to loved ones around the world through an earpiece? That our conversations at busy intersections and streets would be monitored and captured on camera without our knowledge? That pilotless drones would crisscross vast territories collecting data and firing weapons aimed by people on different continents? To think that we have any more insight into what will still be “normal” in 2137 is hubris.
Read
February 6, 2022“We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.”
So What’s It About?
Connie Ramos, a woman in her mid-thirties, has been declared insane. But Connie is overwhelmingly sane, merely tuned to the future, and able to communicate with the year 2137. As her doctors persuade her to agree to an operation, Connie struggles to force herself to listen to the future and its lessons for today….
What I Thought- The F Word
Before I dive into the minutiae of this review, I do think the most important thing to do is take a step back and evaluate the matter that is at the heart of Piercy’s book: her vision for a feminist utopia. I’ll admit to trepidation on this front before reading the book- the 1970s were an incredibly important time for feminism, but I’d also argue that some of the radical/cultural feminism from that era is deeply dated at this point; I pretty much tune out as soon as people start talking about internal goddesses and separatism. With that in mind, I wasn’t sure how Piercy’s vision would withstand the test of 40 years.
As a whole, Woman on the Edge of Time holds up very well, I think. Some of the particulars of Piercy’s politics remain extremely relevant to issues that are at the forefront of feminism today. I was especially intrigued by Piercy’s exploration of gender neutrality: the people of the feminist future in Mattapoisett, while still aware of sex as a construct, do not extrapolate from biology any other sort of attribute or identity, and instead practice gender neutrality including the use of the neutral pronoun “per.”
Entirely contrary to my fears surrounding the use of gender essentialism because of the era of the book’s publication, the people of Mattapoisett have not found the solution to patriarchal control to be the essentialization of womanhood – instead of celebrating a divine female essence as so many cultural feminists did in the 1970s, Piercy argues that such practices simply etch the gender binary further into stone, and that our goal should instead be to eliminate that binary and allow each individual to shine through in their uniqueness. Connie’s reaction to this is rage at first, when she finds that motherhood is no longer a practice tied to gender – if motherhood no longer belongs to women, if they no longer have one thing that makes them special in a world that almost universally denigrates them, then what’s left? Luciente’s answer is simple: the further we entrench ourselves into false dichotomies, the greater our sorrows grow.
Luciente’s future is one where egalitarianism is painstakingly realized in every aspect of the world-building. I’ve already identified the points that were the most thought-provoking to me, but that’s not to say that Piercy has not also given equal thought to matters of economic and environmental justice, mental health, childcare, shared leadership and decision-making and sexuality. There are a few notable exceptions to my general appreciation for her vision, however. It’s apparent that Piercy views all sex work as inherently exploitative and violent, a position that I take issue with. I’m also uncomfortable with the young ages at which teenagers in the future seem to be sleeping with adults much older than them. Perhaps the hottest and bizarrest take of all is Piercy’s heavy-handed insinuation that Connie’s experiences of incest as a young child were totally above-board and harmless. Like, what???
I’d also be remiss if I neglected to explore Piercy’s examination of ableism and the horrific treatment of the mentally ill by the systems that are allegedly designed to help them. This part of the book anticipates intersectionality by depicting the manner in which poor people, queer people and people of color who are also neurodivergent experience heightened marginalization, dehumanization and violence in the mental health system. It’s a brutal, unflinching look at the way that those with mental illness are treated as though they are subhuman with invasions of privacy, the stripping away of basic human rights and -at best- humiliating infantalization.
Connie is a powerful choice for a protagonist for this book, because as a poor woman of color who has been deemed insane, who has been abused her entire life, she so powerfully contrasts the differences between the callousness of the present day world and the compassionate utopia of Mattapoisett. Perhaps most importantly, Piercy insists that though she is the most voiceless of the voiceless, the most denigrated of the denigrated, the most forgotten of the forgotten, she still matters. She still deserves the peace that Mattapoisett offers; she is still a human being with agency no matter how the world tries to strip it away from her, and she still has the capacity to make a difference and, potentially, change the course of the future.
If this is all sounding quite transformative and impactful, that’s because it is! Here’s the thing, though: while Piercy’s ideas are extremely powerful and resonant, I take issue with the manner in which she chose to communicate them. Put simply, I find her methods didactic in the extreme. For all that Connie comes to think of Luciente and the people of Mattapoisett as family, I really can’t say that I felt much of an emotional connection between any of them at all. Most of their conversations consist of Socratic-style info-dumps. I’m not necessarily saying that I could come up with a better way of conveying a vast amount of information about society-building over the course of a 400 page novel, but I AM saying that the impact of Piercy’s ideas is hobbled by the means of their conveyance.
I have a few other quibbles with the time travel aspect of the story. It seems bizarre to me that Luciente and per people had so entirely little knowledge about Connie’s world and how it functioned. Was there some kind of event that caused a loss of information about the world before it was restructured? If I traveled 200 years into the past I think I would have a much better understanding of how it functioned than Luciente did of Connie’s world. I was also frustrated by how bizarrely dismissive Luciente was of Connie’s experiences in the institution. On some occasions it felt like person more or less entirely ignored the horrific things that were happening in Connie’s life to jump right back into lecturing about per society. I additionally would have appreciated it if Connie had been a little bit more inquisitive about the future people’s vocabulary, because I struggled with some of their slang and vocabulary and having a few more explanations about that would have helped a great deal.
If I had more time I would dive down into how Piercy’s version of a gender neutral world contrasts with Le Guin’s take in The Left Hand of Darkness. I fear I’m already straining at the limits of my hypothetical reader’s patience, however, so I think I’ll leave well enough alone for now.
So What’s It About?
Connie Ramos, a woman in her mid-thirties, has been declared insane. But Connie is overwhelmingly sane, merely tuned to the future, and able to communicate with the year 2137. As her doctors persuade her to agree to an operation, Connie struggles to force herself to listen to the future and its lessons for today….
What I Thought- The F Word
Before I dive into the minutiae of this review, I do think the most important thing to do is take a step back and evaluate the matter that is at the heart of Piercy’s book: her vision for a feminist utopia. I’ll admit to trepidation on this front before reading the book- the 1970s were an incredibly important time for feminism, but I’d also argue that some of the radical/cultural feminism from that era is deeply dated at this point; I pretty much tune out as soon as people start talking about internal goddesses and separatism. With that in mind, I wasn’t sure how Piercy’s vision would withstand the test of 40 years.
As a whole, Woman on the Edge of Time holds up very well, I think. Some of the particulars of Piercy’s politics remain extremely relevant to issues that are at the forefront of feminism today. I was especially intrigued by Piercy’s exploration of gender neutrality: the people of the feminist future in Mattapoisett, while still aware of sex as a construct, do not extrapolate from biology any other sort of attribute or identity, and instead practice gender neutrality including the use of the neutral pronoun “per.”
Entirely contrary to my fears surrounding the use of gender essentialism because of the era of the book’s publication, the people of Mattapoisett have not found the solution to patriarchal control to be the essentialization of womanhood – instead of celebrating a divine female essence as so many cultural feminists did in the 1970s, Piercy argues that such practices simply etch the gender binary further into stone, and that our goal should instead be to eliminate that binary and allow each individual to shine through in their uniqueness. Connie’s reaction to this is rage at first, when she finds that motherhood is no longer a practice tied to gender – if motherhood no longer belongs to women, if they no longer have one thing that makes them special in a world that almost universally denigrates them, then what’s left? Luciente’s answer is simple: the further we entrench ourselves into false dichotomies, the greater our sorrows grow.
Luciente’s future is one where egalitarianism is painstakingly realized in every aspect of the world-building. I’ve already identified the points that were the most thought-provoking to me, but that’s not to say that Piercy has not also given equal thought to matters of economic and environmental justice, mental health, childcare, shared leadership and decision-making and sexuality. There are a few notable exceptions to my general appreciation for her vision, however. It’s apparent that Piercy views all sex work as inherently exploitative and violent, a position that I take issue with. I’m also uncomfortable with the young ages at which teenagers in the future seem to be sleeping with adults much older than them. Perhaps the hottest and bizarrest take of all is Piercy’s heavy-handed insinuation that Connie’s experiences of incest as a young child were totally above-board and harmless. Like, what???
I’d also be remiss if I neglected to explore Piercy’s examination of ableism and the horrific treatment of the mentally ill by the systems that are allegedly designed to help them. This part of the book anticipates intersectionality by depicting the manner in which poor people, queer people and people of color who are also neurodivergent experience heightened marginalization, dehumanization and violence in the mental health system. It’s a brutal, unflinching look at the way that those with mental illness are treated as though they are subhuman with invasions of privacy, the stripping away of basic human rights and -at best- humiliating infantalization.
Connie is a powerful choice for a protagonist for this book, because as a poor woman of color who has been deemed insane, who has been abused her entire life, she so powerfully contrasts the differences between the callousness of the present day world and the compassionate utopia of Mattapoisett. Perhaps most importantly, Piercy insists that though she is the most voiceless of the voiceless, the most denigrated of the denigrated, the most forgotten of the forgotten, she still matters. She still deserves the peace that Mattapoisett offers; she is still a human being with agency no matter how the world tries to strip it away from her, and she still has the capacity to make a difference and, potentially, change the course of the future.
If this is all sounding quite transformative and impactful, that’s because it is! Here’s the thing, though: while Piercy’s ideas are extremely powerful and resonant, I take issue with the manner in which she chose to communicate them. Put simply, I find her methods didactic in the extreme. For all that Connie comes to think of Luciente and the people of Mattapoisett as family, I really can’t say that I felt much of an emotional connection between any of them at all. Most of their conversations consist of Socratic-style info-dumps. I’m not necessarily saying that I could come up with a better way of conveying a vast amount of information about society-building over the course of a 400 page novel, but I AM saying that the impact of Piercy’s ideas is hobbled by the means of their conveyance.
I have a few other quibbles with the time travel aspect of the story. It seems bizarre to me that Luciente and per people had so entirely little knowledge about Connie’s world and how it functioned. Was there some kind of event that caused a loss of information about the world before it was restructured? If I traveled 200 years into the past I think I would have a much better understanding of how it functioned than Luciente did of Connie’s world. I was also frustrated by how bizarrely dismissive Luciente was of Connie’s experiences in the institution. On some occasions it felt like person more or less entirely ignored the horrific things that were happening in Connie’s life to jump right back into lecturing about per society. I additionally would have appreciated it if Connie had been a little bit more inquisitive about the future people’s vocabulary, because I struggled with some of their slang and vocabulary and having a few more explanations about that would have helped a great deal.
If I had more time I would dive down into how Piercy’s version of a gender neutral world contrasts with Le Guin’s take in The Left Hand of Darkness. I fear I’m already straining at the limits of my hypothetical reader’s patience, however, so I think I’ll leave well enough alone for now.
September 3, 2017
Disclaimer: The fact that I have to throw another time travel novel into my abandoned book locker may prompt me to be even more harsh in my comments than I should.
I want to travel back in time to stop Marge Piercy from publishing this novel. There would be plenty of enjoyable things to see and do in 1976 New York -- experience the Bicentennial celebrations, watch the Cincinnati Reds sweep the Yankees in the World Series, check out Blondie perform at CBGB -- but erasing this novel from history would be my duty.
Woman on the Edge of Time is the adventure of Connie Ramos, an unemployed widow who lives in a tenement somewhere in the Lower East Side. Connie is visited by her pregnant niece, who's been beaten by the pimp whose child she's carrying. The pimp breaks into Connie's apartment with a back alley doctor to finish the job. When Connie breaks the pimp's nose with a bottle, she's beaten unconscious.
The pimp carts Connie off to Bellevue, where she's been interned once before after spiraling into alcoholic malaise over the death of her second husband and breaking her daughter's arm. Administered Thorazine and carted before uncaring social workers, Connie is unable to get anyone in the system to listen to her. If things weren't bad enough, Connie may be receiving visits by a traveler from the year 2137.
I'm sticking pins in this novel all over again just summarizing the oppressively downtrodden and plodding story. That's not entirely Piercy's fault; I was just in no mood to follow where she wanted to lead me.
I hated Connie Ramos, one of the most insufferable protagonists in science fiction. I would've gotten behind this character if she wanted something, to reunite with her daughter, perhaps, working three jobs to save enough money to move out of El Barrio and make that reunion possible, maybe. I know it's hard out there with Gerald Ford in the White House, but sitting around watching TV and letting your fool niece mix you up in her troubles didn't endear any sympathy from me. I wanted her institutionalized, honestly, where three square meals a day, socializing with nuts and being kept safe from pimps seems like an improvement on her current situation.
I hated the time traveler. Who goes back in time and appears before a mentally unstable woman one hallucination away from being committed? Oh yeah, that's a sound plan. I'm open to the possibility that Connie is hallucinating the visitor altogether, which would be an even more depressing journey for me to continue on.
I can see where Piercy is going with this novel, charting the mental frailties of a woman ostracized by society due to her gender, her ethnicity, her social class. I stuck with it through 88 pages, but Connie is such a course, miserable crank, her past behavior deplorable and her visitor so oblivious to the misery it's causing, that I just didn't want to continue with the book.
I want to travel back in time to stop Marge Piercy from publishing this novel. There would be plenty of enjoyable things to see and do in 1976 New York -- experience the Bicentennial celebrations, watch the Cincinnati Reds sweep the Yankees in the World Series, check out Blondie perform at CBGB -- but erasing this novel from history would be my duty.
Woman on the Edge of Time is the adventure of Connie Ramos, an unemployed widow who lives in a tenement somewhere in the Lower East Side. Connie is visited by her pregnant niece, who's been beaten by the pimp whose child she's carrying. The pimp breaks into Connie's apartment with a back alley doctor to finish the job. When Connie breaks the pimp's nose with a bottle, she's beaten unconscious.
The pimp carts Connie off to Bellevue, where she's been interned once before after spiraling into alcoholic malaise over the death of her second husband and breaking her daughter's arm. Administered Thorazine and carted before uncaring social workers, Connie is unable to get anyone in the system to listen to her. If things weren't bad enough, Connie may be receiving visits by a traveler from the year 2137.
I'm sticking pins in this novel all over again just summarizing the oppressively downtrodden and plodding story. That's not entirely Piercy's fault; I was just in no mood to follow where she wanted to lead me.
I hated Connie Ramos, one of the most insufferable protagonists in science fiction. I would've gotten behind this character if she wanted something, to reunite with her daughter, perhaps, working three jobs to save enough money to move out of El Barrio and make that reunion possible, maybe. I know it's hard out there with Gerald Ford in the White House, but sitting around watching TV and letting your fool niece mix you up in her troubles didn't endear any sympathy from me. I wanted her institutionalized, honestly, where three square meals a day, socializing with nuts and being kept safe from pimps seems like an improvement on her current situation.
I hated the time traveler. Who goes back in time and appears before a mentally unstable woman one hallucination away from being committed? Oh yeah, that's a sound plan. I'm open to the possibility that Connie is hallucinating the visitor altogether, which would be an even more depressing journey for me to continue on.
I can see where Piercy is going with this novel, charting the mental frailties of a woman ostracized by society due to her gender, her ethnicity, her social class. I stuck with it through 88 pages, but Connie is such a course, miserable crank, her past behavior deplorable and her visitor so oblivious to the misery it's causing, that I just didn't want to continue with the book.
June 27, 2012
Hands down one of my all time favorite books - I'm certain some of that has to do with the point in my life during which I read it, however it shall always remain an ultimate favorite. The issues the Ms Piercy so deftly addresses are both the main focus of the story and completely secondary, almost an after thought. . . I never got the feeling of being preached at, yet so many important, and delicate, subjects were addressed throughout this novel. Mental illness, racism, gender equality (or rather inequality), socio-economic injustices - all these and more are deftly covered in this touching story of a woman struggling to make her way in a world where she starts with multiple strikes against her simply by the color of her skin and the fact that she was born female rather than male.
This story switches between a present day world in which we live - with all the messes that actually exist in the "real" world - and a utopian future that is on the brink of destruction (fom the very same dangers that got us to the mess we are currently in). This novel presents some interesting ideas of how we could live, versus how we are living, raising the question of if we are living or simply struggling to continue to exist.
While this book may sound like a very heavy, possibly dry read, it is anything but. Once you pick it up you will be hard pressed to set it down until you have finished it. This is a definite 'not to be missed' read!
This story switches between a present day world in which we live - with all the messes that actually exist in the "real" world - and a utopian future that is on the brink of destruction (fom the very same dangers that got us to the mess we are currently in). This novel presents some interesting ideas of how we could live, versus how we are living, raising the question of if we are living or simply struggling to continue to exist.
While this book may sound like a very heavy, possibly dry read, it is anything but. Once you pick it up you will be hard pressed to set it down until you have finished it. This is a definite 'not to be missed' read!
May 19, 2014
There were times when I was so frustrated with the main character. She was driving me crazy. She was walking through an entirely different world and assuming everything was the same. I realized why this was bothering me - I was wanting and expecting her to react more like a science fiction reader. (And many science fiction characters.)
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
March 5, 2010
I'm ambivalent about this book. The best way to describe my reservation with Woman on the Edge of Time is that I was never comfortable suspending my disbelief. I tried to make myself willing to go where Marge Piercy was taking me but never quite got there. Although the book steadily improved from its chaotic but very dull beginning, it never involved me in the way I require to get much satisfaction from reading. In the end, I was reading the book to finish it instead of because I was eager to find out what happened next—I was not invested in the fate of Connie or Luciente. Piercy's utopia is intriguing and creative—and therein lies the problem.
Woman on the Edge of Time is a good example of how one can take a concept (in this case, a utopian society) and overdo the trope to the point where it distracts from the story one is trying to tell. Through the unique interaction of present (well, the 1970s) with a possible future, Piercy weaves a story of power and revolution. Her protagonist is one of the powerless, the poor, the oppressed. Society is "against" her. Her only hope lies in her ability to envision something potentially better.
There's a difference between having a detailed portrayal of a utopia and an effective one. My new gold standard is probably The Dispossessed . The key requirement is that the description of utopia itself doesn't get in the way of storytelling, and I'm not convinced that requirement is met here. Authors often take license with the imagined future, especially when it is compared with their present. Alone, any of the various concepts that Piercy injects into the future—conflict between the ecologically-aware and the technology-crazed sides of society, reproduction via bottle babies, a sort of non-hierarchical representative-by-lottery democracy, the natural evolution of language and dialect—are interesting and a fine basis for a utopia. Together, they're overwhelming. Piercy's utopia is too crowded.
In contrast, Connie's present is far too simple a world. We're supposed to sympathize with Connie's misfortunes, feel shocked at what the doctors at her asylum are doing when it comes to running experiments on patients. The explanations that the doctors offer Connie when she protests that she doesn't belong in a mental hospital are always curt, snide—it's all very one-sided. Connie's brother, father, and niece are all very unhelpful. It is almost enough to make the sceptic in me wonder if Connie is in fact more far gone than she believes, and the whole time travel part of the book is a delusion. I'm forced to conclude that's not the case, for Piercy never explores this avenue explicitly, except for one particular scene that doesn't confirm the delusion hypothesis. Connie's visits to the future are for the benefit of inspiring her to alter her present.
I am of two minds on this book. Ben the Philosopher appreciates what Piercy is trying to do, considers her utopia and Connie's plight, and contemplates the power struggles and social conflict philosophy underpinning this book. Yet Ben the Reader professes no emotion, no feeling stirred by the story. A book may have the most profound themes ever imagined, but if they don't move me, I cannot in good conscience commend the book. Still, I can say of Woman on the Edge of Time that it strives for greatness, and only in failing does it find mediocrity. Better to strive and fail than just aim low, and for that I can recognize a sincere effort if not a satisfactory one.
Woman on the Edge of Time is a good example of how one can take a concept (in this case, a utopian society) and overdo the trope to the point where it distracts from the story one is trying to tell. Through the unique interaction of present (well, the 1970s) with a possible future, Piercy weaves a story of power and revolution. Her protagonist is one of the powerless, the poor, the oppressed. Society is "against" her. Her only hope lies in her ability to envision something potentially better.
There's a difference between having a detailed portrayal of a utopia and an effective one. My new gold standard is probably The Dispossessed . The key requirement is that the description of utopia itself doesn't get in the way of storytelling, and I'm not convinced that requirement is met here. Authors often take license with the imagined future, especially when it is compared with their present. Alone, any of the various concepts that Piercy injects into the future—conflict between the ecologically-aware and the technology-crazed sides of society, reproduction via bottle babies, a sort of non-hierarchical representative-by-lottery democracy, the natural evolution of language and dialect—are interesting and a fine basis for a utopia. Together, they're overwhelming. Piercy's utopia is too crowded.
In contrast, Connie's present is far too simple a world. We're supposed to sympathize with Connie's misfortunes, feel shocked at what the doctors at her asylum are doing when it comes to running experiments on patients. The explanations that the doctors offer Connie when she protests that she doesn't belong in a mental hospital are always curt, snide—it's all very one-sided. Connie's brother, father, and niece are all very unhelpful. It is almost enough to make the sceptic in me wonder if Connie is in fact more far gone than she believes, and the whole time travel part of the book is a delusion. I'm forced to conclude that's not the case, for Piercy never explores this avenue explicitly, except for one particular scene that doesn't confirm the delusion hypothesis. Connie's visits to the future are for the benefit of inspiring her to alter her present.
I am of two minds on this book. Ben the Philosopher appreciates what Piercy is trying to do, considers her utopia and Connie's plight, and contemplates the power struggles and social conflict philosophy underpinning this book. Yet Ben the Reader professes no emotion, no feeling stirred by the story. A book may have the most profound themes ever imagined, but if they don't move me, I cannot in good conscience commend the book. Still, I can say of Woman on the Edge of Time that it strives for greatness, and only in failing does it find mediocrity. Better to strive and fail than just aim low, and for that I can recognize a sincere effort if not a satisfactory one.
February 26, 2010
The most important thing to know about this book is that it was first published in 1976. This is such a late 1960s-early-mid 1970s story! It’s funny because part of it takes place in the mid 70s and part takes place in the 22nd century. The 22nd century appears as though imagined in the 1970s. So, the future seems dated somehow. I suspect I would have thought it was brilliant if I’d read it over three decades ago. Now, I cringed quite a bit and thought it was unintentionally humorous at times.
The story is about a woman in the 1970s who’s a mental patient (it did remind me a bit of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) but she can communicate with those in the 22nd century. Those in the 22nd century she has the most contact with are still at war but otherwise are living in an almost utopia.
The author seems to say a lot about an egalitarian society, communal living, sexism and class and racism, much about the environment; quite a bit about computers. It’s a cautionary tale and must have seemed quite impressive back in 1976.
I loved the language imagined 150 or so years into the future, how English evolved, done in a way that makes use of the vernacular of the 1960s and the 1970s; it’s adapted from that time. It doesn’t work that well in 2010 but it was splendidly constructed, and I enjoyed revisiting the time of three and a half decades ago.
It took me about 50 pages to start enjoying the book but then I had times when it was difficult to put down. (I did really want to read this: I got first one moldy library copy then another identical edition that was also just as moldy, but I’m glad that I read it.)
I can’t say too much about it so I don’t give anything away, but I found the ending somewhat unsatisfying, but I think that the author was very deliberate about how she ended it.
I wasn’t sure whether to give it 3 or 4 stars. I opted to give it 4 because the story was told in such a creative way.
The story is about a woman in the 1970s who’s a mental patient (it did remind me a bit of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) but she can communicate with those in the 22nd century. Those in the 22nd century she has the most contact with are still at war but otherwise are living in an almost utopia.
The author seems to say a lot about an egalitarian society, communal living, sexism and class and racism, much about the environment; quite a bit about computers. It’s a cautionary tale and must have seemed quite impressive back in 1976.
I loved the language imagined 150 or so years into the future, how English evolved, done in a way that makes use of the vernacular of the 1960s and the 1970s; it’s adapted from that time. It doesn’t work that well in 2010 but it was splendidly constructed, and I enjoyed revisiting the time of three and a half decades ago.
It took me about 50 pages to start enjoying the book but then I had times when it was difficult to put down. (I did really want to read this: I got first one moldy library copy then another identical edition that was also just as moldy, but I’m glad that I read it.)
I can’t say too much about it so I don’t give anything away, but I found the ending somewhat unsatisfying, but I think that the author was very deliberate about how she ended it.
I wasn’t sure whether to give it 3 or 4 stars. I opted to give it 4 because the story was told in such a creative way.
September 5, 2014
TL;DR: I see where others may appreciate the work, but the stuff I have listed in my spoiler section killed it for me.
I want to like this book. It’s one of those rare science fiction books that contains many great ideas in action, and it represents segments of the population that rarely get a say in the genre. After reading a lot of science fiction that panders to white people, I felt like this was a great change of pace. I was primed to enjoy it, to hear new perspectives on distant horizons.
With that in mind, I hope that you can understand my reluctance in writing a review that says that I did not—could not—even finish the book.
Before I give my reasons why, let me say that I can understand why this book would appeal to so many people. Again, it represents undervalued voices in science fiction, giving life to something other-than: other-than English; other-than white, brilliant scientists; other-than intelligent men; other-than swooning, intelligent white women; other-than perfect black women (Clarke’s The Songs of Distant Earth does a good job of putting a few of these in). Since Woman on the Edge of Time features a strong Latina woman who dips frequently into Spanish, has family problems that crush her life, and finds herself in a (literally) disadvantaged, voiceless position, I felt like I was going to get to see new vistas. Those vistas certainly offer the appeal that I can see other people appreciating.
But they simply do not appeal to me. I will tell you why, but first I have to say in big bold letters:
HERE BE SPOILERS.
I’ll just list the reasons I couldn’t finish the book. Maybe others will come along and argue and tell me to keep going, that "it gets better!" Maybe other potential readers will think, “I could soldier through that.” Maybe someone will find some use from my experience. I’ll rate my spoilers from MILD (they won’t spoil the plot too much) to BIG (they are kind of critical).
-MILD: The novel lacks a clear plot. I know, I know, some will say, “The plot is…” but my counter is rather simple: The novel did not contain a significant conflict in the first 175 pages (about how much I read). Connie, the main character, is put into a psyche ward. She is pulled into the future. She is not going to be rescued. That’s it. What is the conflict here that I am supposed to stick around as a reader to find out? Effective narration is conflict, withholding resolution, and then the payoff of multiple strands coming together to resolve it (i.e.--King Lear). This has none of those characteristics.
-MILD: Tied to the last point, I can add this: The entire novel seems to be an excuse for the author to put together a utopia that a naïve woman from the 20th century can explore. The future stuff has NO weight in the narrative. Consuela goes to visit. She comes back, seemingly unchanged and uncritical of what happened to her. She goes back when she gets lonely.
-BIG: If the payoff is supposed to be whether or not Connie is insane and simply dreaming these encounters, I don’t care enough to stick around and find out. Again, some readers may find reading about a utopia fun. I would too if there were a plot to keep me going along with it. If the future scenes were supposed to prime Connie to save humanity because there was some fatal flaw the future folk must reveal, then I would care. If there was more doubt about whether or not these episodes were taking place in her own head, then I would care because at least I have a sense of the coming tragedy. Instead, all we get as readers are funerals, naming rituals, economy lessons, government lessons, story-telling, banquets, bicycling, androgynous characters with identical personalities, drugs, breast-feeding, and lessons on future mental health facilities (hint: they don’t have prisoners). None of this makes me want to stick around as a reader because I just don't care enough to read about characters I can't invest in and who keep simply railroading the only character I DO care about from place to place without giving her anything to do. I resented the future folk, in other words; I wanted Connie to tell me more about herself and to react--I wanted her to do something. Rather than this tour ride, I’d instead enjoy an account of utopia; at least a catalog of its characteristics it is more honest.
-BIG: The main character doesn’t have critical thinking skills. Ever. She is told that she is a catcher and a thrower. What. Does. That. Mean. ?. Seriously. If I were pulled into a future where I were a holographic projection, and if I were told this information, my first questions would be about those roles. What do they mean? What are their limits? How do I use them? Instead, Consuela doesn’t care. Her attitude is simply, “I’ve been pulled into the future. Great! I’ll wander around with this androgynous person and complain about how the future isn’t like the past.” She never stops to ask why she has been contacted (maybe once…but she doesn’t push the issue). She doesn’t seek to find out what happened to the big cities, though they are mentioned. She makes an assumption that “the big one has dropped” but never confirms it outright.
I need more than this to stick it out with an author. Again, I can appreciate what others see, but this isn’t for me.
(I will add one more thing: This novel reminded me a great deal of The Dispossessed by Le Guin. This may also have primed me to not like it, as I felt like I was rereading her work to some degree…though Le Guin had a plot to guide the action.)
I want to like this book. It’s one of those rare science fiction books that contains many great ideas in action, and it represents segments of the population that rarely get a say in the genre. After reading a lot of science fiction that panders to white people, I felt like this was a great change of pace. I was primed to enjoy it, to hear new perspectives on distant horizons.
With that in mind, I hope that you can understand my reluctance in writing a review that says that I did not—could not—even finish the book.
Before I give my reasons why, let me say that I can understand why this book would appeal to so many people. Again, it represents undervalued voices in science fiction, giving life to something other-than: other-than English; other-than white, brilliant scientists; other-than intelligent men; other-than swooning, intelligent white women; other-than perfect black women (Clarke’s The Songs of Distant Earth does a good job of putting a few of these in). Since Woman on the Edge of Time features a strong Latina woman who dips frequently into Spanish, has family problems that crush her life, and finds herself in a (literally) disadvantaged, voiceless position, I felt like I was going to get to see new vistas. Those vistas certainly offer the appeal that I can see other people appreciating.
But they simply do not appeal to me. I will tell you why, but first I have to say in big bold letters:
HERE BE SPOILERS.
I’ll just list the reasons I couldn’t finish the book. Maybe others will come along and argue and tell me to keep going, that "it gets better!" Maybe other potential readers will think, “I could soldier through that.” Maybe someone will find some use from my experience. I’ll rate my spoilers from MILD (they won’t spoil the plot too much) to BIG (they are kind of critical).
-MILD: The novel lacks a clear plot. I know, I know, some will say, “The plot is…” but my counter is rather simple: The novel did not contain a significant conflict in the first 175 pages (about how much I read). Connie, the main character, is put into a psyche ward. She is pulled into the future. She is not going to be rescued. That’s it. What is the conflict here that I am supposed to stick around as a reader to find out? Effective narration is conflict, withholding resolution, and then the payoff of multiple strands coming together to resolve it (i.e.--King Lear). This has none of those characteristics.
-MILD: Tied to the last point, I can add this: The entire novel seems to be an excuse for the author to put together a utopia that a naïve woman from the 20th century can explore. The future stuff has NO weight in the narrative. Consuela goes to visit. She comes back, seemingly unchanged and uncritical of what happened to her. She goes back when she gets lonely.
-BIG: If the payoff is supposed to be whether or not Connie is insane and simply dreaming these encounters, I don’t care enough to stick around and find out. Again, some readers may find reading about a utopia fun. I would too if there were a plot to keep me going along with it. If the future scenes were supposed to prime Connie to save humanity because there was some fatal flaw the future folk must reveal, then I would care. If there was more doubt about whether or not these episodes were taking place in her own head, then I would care because at least I have a sense of the coming tragedy. Instead, all we get as readers are funerals, naming rituals, economy lessons, government lessons, story-telling, banquets, bicycling, androgynous characters with identical personalities, drugs, breast-feeding, and lessons on future mental health facilities (hint: they don’t have prisoners). None of this makes me want to stick around as a reader because I just don't care enough to read about characters I can't invest in and who keep simply railroading the only character I DO care about from place to place without giving her anything to do. I resented the future folk, in other words; I wanted Connie to tell me more about herself and to react--I wanted her to do something. Rather than this tour ride, I’d instead enjoy an account of utopia; at least a catalog of its characteristics it is more honest.
-BIG: The main character doesn’t have critical thinking skills. Ever. She is told that she is a catcher and a thrower. What. Does. That. Mean. ?. Seriously. If I were pulled into a future where I were a holographic projection, and if I were told this information, my first questions would be about those roles. What do they mean? What are their limits? How do I use them? Instead, Consuela doesn’t care. Her attitude is simply, “I’ve been pulled into the future. Great! I’ll wander around with this androgynous person and complain about how the future isn’t like the past.” She never stops to ask why she has been contacted (maybe once…but she doesn’t push the issue). She doesn’t seek to find out what happened to the big cities, though they are mentioned. She makes an assumption that “the big one has dropped” but never confirms it outright.
I need more than this to stick it out with an author. Again, I can appreciate what others see, but this isn’t for me.
(I will add one more thing: This novel reminded me a great deal of The Dispossessed by Le Guin. This may also have primed me to not like it, as I felt like I was rereading her work to some degree…though Le Guin had a plot to guide the action.)
August 8, 2022
Real Rating: 3.5* of five, rounded down because oh no, not really, was the affect of the whole read.
My #1976Club review: https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/...
How disappointing.
My #1976Club review: https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/...
How disappointing.
September 25, 2016
This is one of those situations where I had it in my head that I had to read this my freshman year in college, but because I have a shitty memory, I couldn't actually remember any details so I figured it would be good to re-read it now. Except... I don't think I ever actually read this book. We may not even read this in school at all. Maybe we read something else by Marge Piercy.
So it's good I took the time to read this now. Just in case I never actually did before.
The story begins with 30-something-year-old Connie Ramos living in NY. The reader is under the impression early on that she's had some mental health issues in the past, but when we first meet her, she is living on her own. Her niece visits, and that's where the real trouble begins. Through a short sequence of events that escalated quickly, Connie was again confined to a psychiatric hospital against her will.
But it's not entirely a story of her time in a psychiatric hospital, though that alone is pretty fascinating and equally horrifying. The other part of the story is that Connie is able to communicate with the year 2137. She meets Luciente, a woman from this future time, who takes Connie (in spirit, anyway) to 2137 so she can see their utopic society. Connie's time, to Luciente, is a part of history, a reminder of the way things used to be. When things were really pretty shitty.
As tends to happen in utopic society stories, the utopia portion is pretty holier-than-thou and preachy. I understand why that happens in books like these, but it's irritating to read anyway. Connie herself is difficult to embrace as a character because while these things are happening to her she's still pretty resistant to the idea that Luciente's society in Mattapoisett is all that much better. Considering she just got beat up by her niece's boyfriend and tossed in a hospital against her will, you would think she would be excited to witness the way a society could be when a lot of those issues are obsolete.
At the same time, some of what Luciente had to say was ahead of its time considering the publication date of the mid-70s:
What the fuck would Luciente say about 2016? The shit in our food is worse now than it was when Piercy originally wrote this book.
Overall the story is better than a lot of utopians I have read. I've mentioned that there's some preachiness here, but I would say it's less abrasive than other novels trying to do similar things. I was interested in Mattapoisett and their society, especially their use of non-gendered pronouns. Things that matter so much to so many people still today just don't matter to those in Mattapoisett in 2137, and I have to admit that was refreshing to read about now.
NINO: Nonsense In, Nonsense Out: "It means your theory is no better than your practice, or your body than your nutrition. Your encyclopedia only produces the information or misinformation fed it." (p66)
I want to tattoo NINO on everyone's bodies, especially these days when people share things through social media with no concept of whether or not the information is accurate or not. It's all one-sided drivel, everyone has an agenda, no one truly wants to know all sides of the story. NINO.
In Connie's regular life, she has a battle of the doctors and nurses at the hospital during a time there were few rules or regulations about how patients should be treated in psychiatric hospitals. Things were done to Connie that were difficult for a strong-stomached reader as myself to read, and on more than one occasion I couldn't help but think about that other hospital novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest written in 1962. Not much had improved, apparently in the 10+ years before Piercy wrote her novel.
In addition to the treatment of patients with mental illnesses (or perceived mental illnesses), Piercy covers a lot of other ground such as the previously mentioned environmental/ecological concerns. She touched on racism, perceptions of stereotypes, gender in both timelines, etc. Again, strangely, very little has truly changed since 1976 in the treatments of these issues. I can't say things have gotten worse, but it's in our worlds with more prevalence due to the fact that everyone has a camera, and social media (the blessing and the curse) helps move along the stories much quicker than they moved in 1976.
The point is we can all learn something from Piercy's novel. It's a good read, but more importantly, there are important topics being discussed in this book. I'm glad to have taken the time to re-read (or read for the first time, if that is in fact the case) now. My heart broke for Connie, as frustrating as she was. No one is perfect, and I don't expect my fictional characters to be perfect either. I wanted her to understand what she was capable of and understand the gift she was receiving to be able to see that changes could be made, instead of scoffing at any of it. But I do believe Connie grew into that understanding as the story moved along, and that's what I really ask for.
Highly recommended to anyone who likes time travel novels. And then share with me your thoughts on whether or not you think Connie did indeed travel through time.
Fasure.
So it's good I took the time to read this now. Just in case I never actually did before.
The story begins with 30-something-year-old Connie Ramos living in NY. The reader is under the impression early on that she's had some mental health issues in the past, but when we first meet her, she is living on her own. Her niece visits, and that's where the real trouble begins. Through a short sequence of events that escalated quickly, Connie was again confined to a psychiatric hospital against her will.
But it's not entirely a story of her time in a psychiatric hospital, though that alone is pretty fascinating and equally horrifying. The other part of the story is that Connie is able to communicate with the year 2137. She meets Luciente, a woman from this future time, who takes Connie (in spirit, anyway) to 2137 so she can see their utopic society. Connie's time, to Luciente, is a part of history, a reminder of the way things used to be. When things were really pretty shitty.
As tends to happen in utopic society stories, the utopia portion is pretty holier-than-thou and preachy. I understand why that happens in books like these, but it's irritating to read anyway. Connie herself is difficult to embrace as a character because while these things are happening to her she's still pretty resistant to the idea that Luciente's society in Mattapoisett is all that much better. Considering she just got beat up by her niece's boyfriend and tossed in a hospital against her will, you would think she would be excited to witness the way a society could be when a lot of those issues are obsolete.
At the same time, some of what Luciente had to say was ahead of its time considering the publication date of the mid-70s:
"'Besides, I confess I am afraid to eat here. It's not true, is it, the horror stories in our histories? That your food was full of poisonous chemicals, nitrites, hormone residues, DDT, hydrocarbons, sodium benzoate - that you ate food saturated with preservatives?'"
(p54)
What the fuck would Luciente say about 2016? The shit in our food is worse now than it was when Piercy originally wrote this book.
Overall the story is better than a lot of utopians I have read. I've mentioned that there's some preachiness here, but I would say it's less abrasive than other novels trying to do similar things. I was interested in Mattapoisett and their society, especially their use of non-gendered pronouns. Things that matter so much to so many people still today just don't matter to those in Mattapoisett in 2137, and I have to admit that was refreshing to read about now.
NINO: Nonsense In, Nonsense Out: "It means your theory is no better than your practice, or your body than your nutrition. Your encyclopedia only produces the information or misinformation fed it." (p66)
I want to tattoo NINO on everyone's bodies, especially these days when people share things through social media with no concept of whether or not the information is accurate or not. It's all one-sided drivel, everyone has an agenda, no one truly wants to know all sides of the story. NINO.
In Connie's regular life, she has a battle of the doctors and nurses at the hospital during a time there were few rules or regulations about how patients should be treated in psychiatric hospitals. Things were done to Connie that were difficult for a strong-stomached reader as myself to read, and on more than one occasion I couldn't help but think about that other hospital novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest written in 1962. Not much had improved, apparently in the 10+ years before Piercy wrote her novel.
In addition to the treatment of patients with mental illnesses (or perceived mental illnesses), Piercy covers a lot of other ground such as the previously mentioned environmental/ecological concerns. She touched on racism, perceptions of stereotypes, gender in both timelines, etc. Again, strangely, very little has truly changed since 1976 in the treatments of these issues. I can't say things have gotten worse, but it's in our worlds with more prevalence due to the fact that everyone has a camera, and social media (the blessing and the curse) helps move along the stories much quicker than they moved in 1976.
The point is we can all learn something from Piercy's novel. It's a good read, but more importantly, there are important topics being discussed in this book. I'm glad to have taken the time to re-read (or read for the first time, if that is in fact the case) now. My heart broke for Connie, as frustrating as she was. No one is perfect, and I don't expect my fictional characters to be perfect either. I wanted her to understand what she was capable of and understand the gift she was receiving to be able to see that changes could be made, instead of scoffing at any of it. But I do believe Connie grew into that understanding as the story moved along, and that's what I really ask for.
Highly recommended to anyone who likes time travel novels. And then share with me your thoughts on whether or not you think Connie did indeed travel through time.
Fasure.
February 22, 2024
re-read: This for sure deserves five stars and its rightful place in my heart as one of my favorite books. Happy to have re-read it.
2022:This was rather difficult to get through, because mental institutions and the process that Connie goes through are things that scare the ever-living daylights out of me. In recent times I've thought a lot about psychiatry, neurodivergence, non-normativity and how 'society' wants people to adhere to the norms or they are punished. This is somehow as much true in 2022 as it was in the 70s. And so Connie's plight at the mental institution was uniquely claustrophobic for me. The gaslighting she went through, the way her 'doctors' measured her mental health according to societal norms and completely ignored her words, her story, well that made me feel like I was suffocating, honestly.
And I've seen a lot of people complaining about Connie's reactions to the future and how she wasn't open to all of the advances, but I ask you: isn't that what is happening now and always? Piercy's vision of the future, while very aligned with my personal values, is imperfect, ofc (it had a bit of a eugenics-y vibe with how they bred, and then there was the relationship between Jackrabbit and Bolivar, which had started when the former was 13 and the latter 19 and that's icky, to give a couple of examples, there were some other things about justice that didn't sit right with me), but also people raised in this normative world, where all deviations are punished and enforced socially, well, they tend to make people unable to imagine a different future, because they take as normal so many things in the capitalist society we live in. People don't take the time to think about why we do stuff (like marriage, consumerism, school, literally everything) the way we do it and it severely hinders our ability to imagine the future.
Take for instance the use of the one pronoun mentioned in the future, 'per'. There are so many people complaining about they/them these days, do you think they'd grasp why there is one gender neutral pronoun in the future? It's like: 'it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism', because capitalism is naturalized in present day and it steals energy from and hinders our ability to imagine a better world.
The question of 'is Connie delusional' is an irrelevant question relating to plot and not the ideas within. Does it matter? What matters is that, in her horrifying circumstances, stripped of loved ones, support, bodily autonomy, even her own humanity, Connie still has the strength to fight for a better world. The imagining is the battle won, with action that reinforces the imagining.
I've also seen in other reviews complaints about lack of nuance in the doctors' and Connie's family members portrayal, but to me there is no nuance needed. There have always existed and there will probably always exist such callous, cruel, dehumanizing individuals. That's kinda the point. Most of the things Connie goes through in the hospitals have happened (and also much worse things, much worse experiments). Queer people have had worse families than Connie (some were murdered by their families). It's the banality of evil, everybody! I think in 2022 we should decide that villains no longer need to be empathetic and conflicted. We should decide that the system is heartless and it's not necessarily a measure of good writing to try to find the heart there.
And we should also practice on our ability to imagine the future. If we bow our heads and stay content because I guess we can survive, then a better future is so much farther away.
I just want to say that the future utopia has some really standout moments, the revelry, the community discussing a difficult situation in a non-monogamous situation, the mourning bit. A lot of what Marge Piercy put in the future is what I'd like there to be in my future. But as it stands, I am left just like Connie: there is so much work to be done and I probably won't see it in my lifetime and that makes it difficult to fight, but also imperative.
2022:This was rather difficult to get through, because mental institutions and the process that Connie goes through are things that scare the ever-living daylights out of me. In recent times I've thought a lot about psychiatry, neurodivergence, non-normativity and how 'society' wants people to adhere to the norms or they are punished. This is somehow as much true in 2022 as it was in the 70s. And so Connie's plight at the mental institution was uniquely claustrophobic for me. The gaslighting she went through, the way her 'doctors' measured her mental health according to societal norms and completely ignored her words, her story, well that made me feel like I was suffocating, honestly.
And I've seen a lot of people complaining about Connie's reactions to the future and how she wasn't open to all of the advances, but I ask you: isn't that what is happening now and always? Piercy's vision of the future, while very aligned with my personal values, is imperfect, ofc (it had a bit of a eugenics-y vibe with how they bred, and then there was the relationship between Jackrabbit and Bolivar, which had started when the former was 13 and the latter 19 and that's icky, to give a couple of examples, there were some other things about justice that didn't sit right with me), but also people raised in this normative world, where all deviations are punished and enforced socially, well, they tend to make people unable to imagine a different future, because they take as normal so many things in the capitalist society we live in. People don't take the time to think about why we do stuff (like marriage, consumerism, school, literally everything) the way we do it and it severely hinders our ability to imagine the future.
Take for instance the use of the one pronoun mentioned in the future, 'per'. There are so many people complaining about they/them these days, do you think they'd grasp why there is one gender neutral pronoun in the future? It's like: 'it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism', because capitalism is naturalized in present day and it steals energy from and hinders our ability to imagine a better world.
The question of 'is Connie delusional' is an irrelevant question relating to plot and not the ideas within. Does it matter? What matters is that, in her horrifying circumstances, stripped of loved ones, support, bodily autonomy, even her own humanity, Connie still has the strength to fight for a better world. The imagining is the battle won, with action that reinforces the imagining.
I've also seen in other reviews complaints about lack of nuance in the doctors' and Connie's family members portrayal, but to me there is no nuance needed. There have always existed and there will probably always exist such callous, cruel, dehumanizing individuals. That's kinda the point. Most of the things Connie goes through in the hospitals have happened (and also much worse things, much worse experiments). Queer people have had worse families than Connie (some were murdered by their families). It's the banality of evil, everybody! I think in 2022 we should decide that villains no longer need to be empathetic and conflicted. We should decide that the system is heartless and it's not necessarily a measure of good writing to try to find the heart there.
And we should also practice on our ability to imagine the future. If we bow our heads and stay content because I guess we can survive, then a better future is so much farther away.
I just want to say that the future utopia has some really standout moments, the revelry, the community discussing a difficult situation in a non-monogamous situation, the mourning bit. A lot of what Marge Piercy put in the future is what I'd like there to be in my future. But as it stands, I am left just like Connie: there is so much work to be done and I probably won't see it in my lifetime and that makes it difficult to fight, but also imperative.
June 7, 2022
Machismo, racismo, clasismo, opresión, violencia, un sistema hostil con las mujeres, negras y pobres. El libro es durísimo, casi insoportable a veces.
No le doy más estrellas por ese final tan innecesario.
No le doy más estrellas por ese final tan innecesario.
March 11, 2012
The book tells the story of a hispanic woman, Connie, who has the ability to communicate with a group of people from the future. The story cuts back and forth between her 1970's life in a mental institution (which has nothing to do with her ability to talk to people in the future) and the future community.
I thought this book spoke well to three broad topics:
-What it meant to be a mental patient in the 70's
-What the future could be like if we continue to pollute our planet and our bodies with synthetic, harmful chemicals
-What the future could be like if we were more intuned to nature
This book is in equal measure a criticism of Piercy's times and a hopeful ision of what our society could be. Personally, I would love to live in a society where culture is not tied to race, where food is grown locally, where people discuss their problems person-to-person until they are resolved, and where people learn their entire lives long. Some have criticized the book for being dated, but I don't think so at all. The language was poetic and evocative. The characters have remained with me, and each one reminds me of someone I know.
I have recommended this book to many of my friends so that we can discuss the implications of Piercy's vision of the future.
I thought this book spoke well to three broad topics:
-What it meant to be a mental patient in the 70's
-What the future could be like if we continue to pollute our planet and our bodies with synthetic, harmful chemicals
-What the future could be like if we were more intuned to nature
This book is in equal measure a criticism of Piercy's times and a hopeful ision of what our society could be. Personally, I would love to live in a society where culture is not tied to race, where food is grown locally, where people discuss their problems person-to-person until they are resolved, and where people learn their entire lives long. Some have criticized the book for being dated, but I don't think so at all. The language was poetic and evocative. The characters have remained with me, and each one reminds me of someone I know.
I have recommended this book to many of my friends so that we can discuss the implications of Piercy's vision of the future.
January 27, 2024
Me parece que las utopías pecan de ingenuidad y esta no es la excepción. Me gustaría creer que un mundo mejor es posible, pero a estas alturas de la vida, la verdad es que no lo creo.
Fuera de eso, pienso que el libro pudo haber tomado algunos giros que me hubieran gustado más, sobre todo hacia el final, que siento que queda demasiado abierto.
Al final le subo cuatro estrellas, porque hay varios temas que me han gustado y me han hecho reflexionar con el paso del tiempo.
Fuera de eso, pienso que el libro pudo haber tomado algunos giros que me hubieran gustado más, sobre todo hacia el final, que siento que queda demasiado abierto.
Al final le subo cuatro estrellas, porque hay varios temas que me han gustado y me han hecho reflexionar con el paso del tiempo.
June 18, 2021
It's really hard for me to enjoy stories with so much violence against women. This starts with violence at the hands of a pimp before moving onto state abuse enacted by psychiatric institutions and none of it is enjoyable to read. I want to say that things improve some time after the halfway point but my overriding memory of this story will be of a woman begging her brother for a weekend release from a mental hospital that plans to cut out part of her brain. The glimpses of the future just don't have the emotional punch that the abuse does and the book suffers for it.
I'd say that WotEoT is well written. There's certainly a demographic that such a story will appeal to. I'm just not in it. 2 stars.
I'd say that WotEoT is well written. There's certainly a demographic that such a story will appeal to. I'm just not in it. 2 stars.
October 4, 2021
Una densa utopía soñada en una realidad de pesadilla que no se termina. Fue un libro muy pesado de leer pero al mismo tiempo fue una revelación importante e inspiradora. Pesado por los temas que me interpelaban: dilemas de raza, de género, problemas de existir como mujer, de la exposición a la pobreza, de lo poco humana que es la salud mental con sus enfermos.
Es un libro que me exigió mucho pero también me pedía no abandonarlo, justo como la sociedad abandono a Connie su protagonista, que es una paria en todo sentido si se la ve desde las normativas de lo normal y lo funcional en el mundo. La paradoja, conmovedora y trágica es que está mujer olvidada representa para una sociedad futura -Mattapoisett-, una puerta de esperanza y ejemplo de lucha, ella y quienes son como ella son centrales para poder aspirar a ese mundo que en muchos aspectos se antoja mejor y en otros perturbador por que constantemente está cuestionando de frente nuestros propios defectos y errores sociales y morales al vivir sumidos en el individualismo más vacuo.
No hay una conclusión alegre y fácil a la historia de Connie, ni sus viajes por el tiempo, pero si pone en el centro de un viaje fantástico y épico a quienes el canon ha olvidado y no ve como héroes ni heroínas, la gente de relleno, los olvidados, los que no son indispensables por una vez, en el tiempo entre la gente de Mattapoisett tienen un momento de justicia reivindicativa para todas esas existencias que han sufrido por nacer y existir en lo más bajo del mundo.
Es un libro que me exigió mucho pero también me pedía no abandonarlo, justo como la sociedad abandono a Connie su protagonista, que es una paria en todo sentido si se la ve desde las normativas de lo normal y lo funcional en el mundo. La paradoja, conmovedora y trágica es que está mujer olvidada representa para una sociedad futura -Mattapoisett-, una puerta de esperanza y ejemplo de lucha, ella y quienes son como ella son centrales para poder aspirar a ese mundo que en muchos aspectos se antoja mejor y en otros perturbador por que constantemente está cuestionando de frente nuestros propios defectos y errores sociales y morales al vivir sumidos en el individualismo más vacuo.
No hay una conclusión alegre y fácil a la historia de Connie, ni sus viajes por el tiempo, pero si pone en el centro de un viaje fantástico y épico a quienes el canon ha olvidado y no ve como héroes ni heroínas, la gente de relleno, los olvidados, los que no son indispensables por una vez, en el tiempo entre la gente de Mattapoisett tienen un momento de justicia reivindicativa para todas esas existencias que han sufrido por nacer y existir en lo más bajo del mundo.
August 30, 2014
Talking with a friend today about how to review this book, she said "start with the ending." Because it's unusual, in much the same way the entire novel is unusual. Consuelo Ramos is a 35 year old Chicana woman, poor, struggling, pummeled by poverty and the people around her. Piercy builds our knowledge of Connie's character with spiny tidbits that don't go down easy: just when Connie couldn't seem more stupid, we are led with wicked smart prose to understand that few of her circumstances are her fault. Given choices from a bag of tricks assembled by a practical joker is no way to live. Born into crushing poverty and the rage that brings home, in a culture that keeps that family together, bruised and hopeless, Connie can only escape from one untenable situation to another. To prison maybe for the bruisers of life; if not, to the asylum for the battered. Connie is a woman on the edge. Of everything. She has a gift though. She's a catcher, an empath and into her personal hell appears a person from the future, a person who can show Connie what living can be, what the living can fight to achieve. Institutionalized, she's a powerless woman who can easily provide a subject - willing or not - for medical experimentation. Yet a person without power is an equal to millions of others. Millions who want the same things she does. Love, some dignity and a say in her own life. The future is not fixed. A woman can make a stand.
November 16, 2007
It's been a while, but I remember liking this book a lot. It has some fantastic notions and weird/interesting ideas within its future utopia (futuropia? femitopia?) that are fun to agree or disagree with.
Unlike other utopia novels, Piercy gives you room to agree or not. This is admirable and is as it should be; I can't stand force-feeding-shrill-polemic books (Ayn Rand, I'm looking at you). As John Stuart Mill said, "The worst offense that can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatize those who hold a contrary opinion as bad and immoral [people]."
Beyond being an exploration of ideals, there is decent characterization and tenderness. I dug it.
Unlike other utopia novels, Piercy gives you room to agree or not. This is admirable and is as it should be; I can't stand force-feeding-shrill-polemic books (Ayn Rand, I'm looking at you). As John Stuart Mill said, "The worst offense that can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatize those who hold a contrary opinion as bad and immoral [people]."
Beyond being an exploration of ideals, there is decent characterization and tenderness. I dug it.
May 21, 2010
Still mulling this one over. It was an absolutely compelling read. My heart went out to Connie from the first page. Her treatment by the mental health system was horrifying, and the author's commentary on the treatment of poor people and people of color by society seemed all too real.
Even after my lengthy intermission (I had to return the book to the library, and then wait for the hold to work its way back to me), I found myself instantly caught up in it again.
The only thing I'm on the fence about is the ending, which felt a little unresolved - or maybe I'm just not satisfied with the resolution.
Even after my lengthy intermission (I had to return the book to the library, and then wait for the hold to work its way back to me), I found myself instantly caught up in it again.
The only thing I'm on the fence about is the ending, which felt a little unresolved - or maybe I'm just not satisfied with the resolution.
December 11, 2011
Amazing if only for the introduction of 'per' as a gender neutral pronoun, Brilliant....and the social commentary is great as well..
December 29, 2020
Anlatilan ütopik duzen heyecan vericiydi. Ana hikayenin oraya baglanis seklini de baslarda akici buldum (son 100 sayfada asla akmadi). Onsozde Mulksuzler'e benzediginden bahsedilmis, dogru. Diger yandan Otomatik Portakal'a da benzettim. Insanin ozgur iradesi kisitlanip iyi birine donusturulmesi (uyusturulmasi) dogru mudur sorusuna yanit aranmis.
Son kisimlari biraz daginik buldum. Utopik dunyayla ilgili yazarin kafasi dagilmis gibiydi ya da bilmiyorum Connie'nin kafa karisikligini yansitmak icin hikayeyi bulandirmis olabilir. Mesela sonradan Luciente'nin inkar ettigi bir savas bolumu vardi. Luciente'nin burada Hawk'a kucumseyici ve yok sayan bir tavri vardi, utopik dunyada ilk kez hissettirilen turden bir ego savasi gibiydi. Dikkat cekiciydi, hikayede sırıttığını dusunmustum. Sonradan bu kismi Luciente inkar edince bunun Connie'nin ruyasi oldugunu dusundum. Sonlarda yaratilan kafa karisikligina (bunlar gercek mi, Connie'nin hayalgucu mu) bu kisim sayesinde kendimce yanit buldum. Bence Luciente basindan sonuna kadar Connie haricinde vardi, soyledikleri kendi icinde son derece tutarliydi, sondaki tek ruya ve sayiklama ani haric. O an Connie'nin bilincine aitti ve Connie'nin alisik oldugu davranis bicimleri ile insa edilmisti (hor gorme, savas, mucadele). Kendimce buldugum bu yanita tutunuyor ve "ee buraya kadar her sey sayiklamaydi mi demeye calismis" hissinden siyriliyorum. Aksi halde yazarin guzelim bir utopyayi sayiklamaya indirgemis olabilecegini dusunmek istemiyorum.
Son ana kadar Connie'nin gozunden baktik, son birkac sayfada doktorlarin bakis acisi yansitilmis. Burada yukarida bahsettigim ozgur iradeyi kisitlamak iyi midir sorusuna doktorlarin gozunden 'evet' yaniti verilmis. Tum hikaye boyunca Connie, Skip, Sibyl ve diger hastalarin gozunden bakinca kulaga hos gelmeyen bir durum, doktorlarin gozunden okur icin daha 'normal' bir sey olarak yansitilmis. Top okura atilmis, su tarz bir secim yapilmasi istenmis: Siz karar verin, alistigimiz duzende bize uymayan insanlari ilaclarla uyusturarak tamamen devre disi birakabiliriz; diger bir secenek ise komple aliskanliklarimizi degistirip insan iliskilerini daha saglikli bir hale sokarak bu insanlari da toplum icin verimli hale getirebiliriz.
Son kisimlari biraz daginik buldum. Utopik dunyayla ilgili yazarin kafasi dagilmis gibiydi ya da bilmiyorum Connie'nin kafa karisikligini yansitmak icin hikayeyi bulandirmis olabilir. Mesela sonradan Luciente'nin inkar ettigi bir savas bolumu vardi. Luciente'nin burada Hawk'a kucumseyici ve yok sayan bir tavri vardi, utopik dunyada ilk kez hissettirilen turden bir ego savasi gibiydi. Dikkat cekiciydi, hikayede sırıttığını dusunmustum. Sonradan bu kismi Luciente inkar edince bunun Connie'nin ruyasi oldugunu dusundum. Sonlarda yaratilan kafa karisikligina (bunlar gercek mi, Connie'nin hayalgucu mu) bu kisim sayesinde kendimce yanit buldum. Bence Luciente basindan sonuna kadar Connie haricinde vardi, soyledikleri kendi icinde son derece tutarliydi, sondaki tek ruya ve sayiklama ani haric. O an Connie'nin bilincine aitti ve Connie'nin alisik oldugu davranis bicimleri ile insa edilmisti (hor gorme, savas, mucadele). Kendimce buldugum bu yanita tutunuyor ve "ee buraya kadar her sey sayiklamaydi mi demeye calismis" hissinden siyriliyorum. Aksi halde yazarin guzelim bir utopyayi sayiklamaya indirgemis olabilecegini dusunmek istemiyorum.
Son ana kadar Connie'nin gozunden baktik, son birkac sayfada doktorlarin bakis acisi yansitilmis. Burada yukarida bahsettigim ozgur iradeyi kisitlamak iyi midir sorusuna doktorlarin gozunden 'evet' yaniti verilmis. Tum hikaye boyunca Connie, Skip, Sibyl ve diger hastalarin gozunden bakinca kulaga hos gelmeyen bir durum, doktorlarin gozunden okur icin daha 'normal' bir sey olarak yansitilmis. Top okura atilmis, su tarz bir secim yapilmasi istenmis: Siz karar verin, alistigimiz duzende bize uymayan insanlari ilaclarla uyusturarak tamamen devre disi birakabiliriz; diger bir secenek ise komple aliskanliklarimizi degistirip insan iliskilerini daha saglikli bir hale sokarak bu insanlari da toplum icin verimli hale getirebiliriz.
March 11, 2010
At last - a book I've been meaning to put on the wish list and that's on one of my group's Reads next month. (Even better - my library has a copy in house!)
************************
Rating: 3.3-3.5 stars
If the last two novels I had read before this had been Paul McAuley's The Quiet War and Bruce Sterling's The Caryatids then I may have nudged my rating into the 4-star category but they weren't. Instead they were Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes, Mr. Fortune's Maggot and Summer Will Show, and Piercy's writing style suffered by comparison (IMO, of course).
Another strike against the novel was that I wasn't able to "get into it" for the first 100 pages or so.
However: It got better. The writing, while never on the level Warner seems to reach effortlessly, did improve and there were some scenes that did leap off the page. And after Chapter 4, it became easier for me to empathize with Connie and enjoy her trips to the world of 2137.
One of my groups is reading the book this month (March 2010) so I'm going to hold off on a more thorough (and spoiler-laden) review until later this month, hoping to get some insights and different POVs from the discussion threads.
************************
Woman on the Edge of Time (WOTEOT or Woman) is an interesting if not especially well written entry in the utopian/dystopian genre. It describes a future Earth where hierarchies have disappeared, gender roles are nonexistent, communities live in sustainable harmony with their environments and people realize their potentials. (Some people commented in the reading thread that it seemed dated in places because it was written in the '70s but I found its interest in the environment, war, out-of-control technology and social pressures to conform very contemporary.) The future isn't perfect. There's still the specter of a war against the remnants of the earlier machine, exploitative civilization (i.e., us - the 20th Century). But that culture only clings to a few enclaves on Earth and some space stations.
We find out about this future through the psychic journeys of Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, a middle-aged Chicana whose life has been stifled by all the problems the future has solved. The promise of a better life was quashed when she had to drop out of college after only 2 years, having gotten pregnant by her first husband. When another lover, Claud (the only decent relationship Connie ever had), dies, she descends into a haze of depression and alcohol, loses her daughter and spends some time in a mental institution. When she tries to protect her niece Dolly from her pimp/boy friend, Connie winds up in an institution again because she's a "threat" and prone to violence. Just prior to this, Connie had been visited by a vision of Luciente, who turns out to be from 2137. Connie is a prime "receiver," and can travel with Luciente to the future, where she has a physical existence and can interact with the people she meets there in a limited way.
Meanwhile, as Connie learns about the future, in the present she and her fellow inmates are threatened by a scientist who wants to experiment with brain surgery to "cure" them.
For me, the selections of the novel set in the mental ward were the most affecting. Piercy manages to generate a real feeling for the helplessness and despair that its inmates feel as their lives are destroyed by the callous indifference of the staff, mental and physical abuse, and the determination of the doctors to try out their pet theories about mental health. The authors uses the future to highlight these cruelties in comparison as well as other issues that resonate today - the environment, gender conflict, war, individuals vs. community, and others.
I would argue that, in the end, the future Connie visits is a hallucination that her mind constructs to give her the tools she needs to finally act against her oppressors. The ending is poignantly bleak - her rebellion is no more than a passive-aggressive attack against her immediate enemies - the doctors tormenting her and her friends. Connie manages to avoid further brain surgeries but is unable to escape her imprisonment, and ends up institutionalized for life. There's a glimmer of hope that her action may have allowed her friend Sybil to escape but the reader is left in the dark about that; and there's no certainty that Luciente's future is the real one as she has pointed out earlier that her reality is merely a possibility.
I give WOTEOT a qualified recommendation. I enjoyed it eventually and found a lot to admire and hope for in Piercy's vision of the future, and I would certainly recommend it to the utopian/dystopian reading crowd.
************************
Rating: 3.3-3.5 stars
If the last two novels I had read before this had been Paul McAuley's The Quiet War and Bruce Sterling's The Caryatids then I may have nudged my rating into the 4-star category but they weren't. Instead they were Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes, Mr. Fortune's Maggot and Summer Will Show, and Piercy's writing style suffered by comparison (IMO, of course).
Another strike against the novel was that I wasn't able to "get into it" for the first 100 pages or so.
However: It got better. The writing, while never on the level Warner seems to reach effortlessly, did improve and there were some scenes that did leap off the page. And after Chapter 4, it became easier for me to empathize with Connie and enjoy her trips to the world of 2137.
One of my groups is reading the book this month (March 2010) so I'm going to hold off on a more thorough (and spoiler-laden) review until later this month, hoping to get some insights and different POVs from the discussion threads.
************************
Woman on the Edge of Time (WOTEOT or Woman) is an interesting if not especially well written entry in the utopian/dystopian genre. It describes a future Earth where hierarchies have disappeared, gender roles are nonexistent, communities live in sustainable harmony with their environments and people realize their potentials. (Some people commented in the reading thread that it seemed dated in places because it was written in the '70s but I found its interest in the environment, war, out-of-control technology and social pressures to conform very contemporary.) The future isn't perfect. There's still the specter of a war against the remnants of the earlier machine, exploitative civilization (i.e., us - the 20th Century). But that culture only clings to a few enclaves on Earth and some space stations.
We find out about this future through the psychic journeys of Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, a middle-aged Chicana whose life has been stifled by all the problems the future has solved. The promise of a better life was quashed when she had to drop out of college after only 2 years, having gotten pregnant by her first husband. When another lover, Claud (the only decent relationship Connie ever had), dies, she descends into a haze of depression and alcohol, loses her daughter and spends some time in a mental institution. When she tries to protect her niece Dolly from her pimp/boy friend, Connie winds up in an institution again because she's a "threat" and prone to violence. Just prior to this, Connie had been visited by a vision of Luciente, who turns out to be from 2137. Connie is a prime "receiver," and can travel with Luciente to the future, where she has a physical existence and can interact with the people she meets there in a limited way.
Meanwhile, as Connie learns about the future, in the present she and her fellow inmates are threatened by a scientist who wants to experiment with brain surgery to "cure" them.
For me, the selections of the novel set in the mental ward were the most affecting. Piercy manages to generate a real feeling for the helplessness and despair that its inmates feel as their lives are destroyed by the callous indifference of the staff, mental and physical abuse, and the determination of the doctors to try out their pet theories about mental health. The authors uses the future to highlight these cruelties in comparison as well as other issues that resonate today - the environment, gender conflict, war, individuals vs. community, and others.
I would argue that, in the end, the future Connie visits is a hallucination that her mind constructs to give her the tools she needs to finally act against her oppressors. The ending is poignantly bleak - her rebellion is no more than a passive-aggressive attack against her immediate enemies - the doctors tormenting her and her friends. Connie manages to avoid further brain surgeries but is unable to escape her imprisonment, and ends up institutionalized for life. There's a glimmer of hope that her action may have allowed her friend Sybil to escape but the reader is left in the dark about that; and there's no certainty that Luciente's future is the real one as she has pointed out earlier that her reality is merely a possibility.
I give WOTEOT a qualified recommendation. I enjoyed it eventually and found a lot to admire and hope for in Piercy's vision of the future, and I would certainly recommend it to the utopian/dystopian reading crowd.
July 12, 2007
This book is very imaginative, although a bit dated at times. Marge Piercy is a unique writer, in that she is very good at writing complex characters with strengths and flaws. Similiarly, her Utopian Society of the future has had to sacrifice some things that are extremely important to Connie (or nearly any 20th/ 21st C person) in order to create a sustaining and egalitarian society.
This novel also has some nice poetic moments. In one of the more illustrative passages, Connie's friends from the future drop in on 20th C United States. They are disgusted by the noise, pollution and conspicuous consumption of the passing automobiles. Connie gives a lovely solliloquy about the joy of riding in a car with your friends while listening to the radio on a hot summer day. It was nicely handled.
Definite recommended reading -- it's got the sci-fi element but the writing and characterizations are strong enough to make the book enjoyable to most people who enjoy a good imaginative, anti-establishment novel.
This novel also has some nice poetic moments. In one of the more illustrative passages, Connie's friends from the future drop in on 20th C United States. They are disgusted by the noise, pollution and conspicuous consumption of the passing automobiles. Connie gives a lovely solliloquy about the joy of riding in a car with your friends while listening to the radio on a hot summer day. It was nicely handled.
Definite recommended reading -- it's got the sci-fi element but the writing and characterizations are strong enough to make the book enjoyable to most people who enjoy a good imaginative, anti-establishment novel.
December 21, 2020
Gerçek mi yoksa deli kadının yakarışları mı, çok ikilemde kaldım.
"Çocuklarla yaşlıların hısım olduğuna inanıyoruz. Yaşamın her ucunda daha fazla zaman var. Bu yaşama ve ölüme yakınlık, büyük sorunlara ve temel konulara ortak ilgi oluşturuyor."
"Çocuklarla yaşlıların hısım olduğuna inanıyoruz. Yaşamın her ucunda daha fazla zaman var. Bu yaşama ve ölüme yakınlık, büyük sorunlara ve temel konulara ortak ilgi oluşturuyor."
December 13, 2019
Sonu ile oldukça şaşırtıcı ve beni çok etkileyen bir ütopya. Connie'nin hayatı oldukça acıklı. Zamanla tanıdıkça Connie'ye hak veriyorsunuz. Luciente, Diana, Jackrabbit, Bee, Bolivar... Bu isimlerle aşkın cinsiyet gözetmediğini, siyaseti, toplum düzeninin nasıl sağlandığını, çocuk üretim evi ve işleyişini, çocukların küçük yaşlarda doğa ile iç içe yaşamayı öğrenmesini, doğanın korunmasının her şeyden önemli olduğunu anlatan harika bir kurgu. Yazar geçmişte yapılan hatalara düşmemeye çalışan, tabiatı koruyan bir toplum yaratmış. Connie'nin yanlışlıkla gittiği daha ileri gelecek beni epey korkuttu. Herkesin kitaplığında olması gerektiğini düşünüyorum.
August 2, 2017
I picked up this book because my local library had it listed in their "Recommended for people interested in time travel", and the blurb on the back sounded interesting enough. But I did not expect to be swept up like this, and taken on a wild ride, only to emerge bleary-eyed and confused, but also deeply shaken and moved.
The story follows Connie Ramos, a Mexican-American woman who finds she can travel (or project) herself into the future, in the year 2137. Society has changed, with people living in communes. There is equality and fairness (aside: the use of the genderless 'person' and 'per' instead of the usual him/her and indications of gender being very fuzzy, made me really pleased; it's not often that a novel deals with a future in which gender-neutral pronouns are a thing), but there is also war. And as the reader discovers more and more of Mattapoisett, Luciente, Bee, Jackrabbit and the entire cast of future people, it is obvious how close to a utopia our society has become.
The parts taking place in Connie's time and world, however, are much darker. I suffer from anxiety and depression, and during a particularly rough time in 2011, there were talks of going into hospital for treatment. It never happened, but since I have always been so afraid of either becoming so ill that I'm sectioned, or feeling so incapable of taking care of myself that I willingly go in for heavy psychiatric treatment. For Connie, there is no choice. And the horrific life on the wards becomes merely the beginning. From uncaring doctors and nurses, to the treatment of patients like barely cognisant animals, to the barrage of drugs, humiliation and procedures that the patients go through, it became a struggle for me to keep going. But as I kept reading, and as Connie keeps travelling more and more into the future, it became abundantly clear that Piercy wrote her character (a woman of colour) with the intent of having her be a disenfranchised voice in a world that doesn't care about her. Whether it's her brother signing over her rights (effectively robbing her of consent in a medical situation), her treatment at the hands of the medical and legal establishment, or the ways in which she is constantly mistrusted, disbelieved and outright mocked, it's clear that not only are people like Connie out there (and even today, in the 21st century, they did not miraculously vanish in the 80s), but they are still muted, ignored and treated as barely human.
Slowly, it becomes obvious just how much of an indictment against society this novel is. It's not just about the utopian future of Mattapoisett, it's also about the fact that we are still a long way off from it. We are a society fixed on material gain, on acquisition at all costs, and on equating happiness with having "things", rather than love, self-betterment, community and acceptance. Luciente is not just a spokesperson for the future, she is also someone who genuinely hopes that Earth is heading towards that glorious future. For Connie, it's an eye-opening experience, and for me it was a chance to think further on how many are silenced daily, and the war that those in power wage against those with less or nothing.
For me, this is a book to revisit. It's feminist literature, but it's also a manifesto for those without voices, it's a novel about human dignity, hope, and the endurance of the human spirit. Ultimately, it has moved me to my core, and it's perhaps one of the best books to end the year on. In a year in which I found myself looking as we continually lose freedoms, while also being further silenced by those who do not wish to listen, Piercy gives me the vision of a future of equality, understanding and love. And perhaps the best thing to take away from this is not so much the ending for Connie, but the ending I would like to see for our world and society: one in which the value of a human being is simply in their being alive, not in their race, gender, sexuality, materials gains or work.
The story follows Connie Ramos, a Mexican-American woman who finds she can travel (or project) herself into the future, in the year 2137. Society has changed, with people living in communes. There is equality and fairness (aside: the use of the genderless 'person' and 'per' instead of the usual him/her and indications of gender being very fuzzy, made me really pleased; it's not often that a novel deals with a future in which gender-neutral pronouns are a thing), but there is also war. And as the reader discovers more and more of Mattapoisett, Luciente, Bee, Jackrabbit and the entire cast of future people, it is obvious how close to a utopia our society has become.
The parts taking place in Connie's time and world, however, are much darker. I suffer from anxiety and depression, and during a particularly rough time in 2011, there were talks of going into hospital for treatment. It never happened, but since I have always been so afraid of either becoming so ill that I'm sectioned, or feeling so incapable of taking care of myself that I willingly go in for heavy psychiatric treatment. For Connie, there is no choice. And the horrific life on the wards becomes merely the beginning. From uncaring doctors and nurses, to the treatment of patients like barely cognisant animals, to the barrage of drugs, humiliation and procedures that the patients go through, it became a struggle for me to keep going. But as I kept reading, and as Connie keeps travelling more and more into the future, it became abundantly clear that Piercy wrote her character (a woman of colour) with the intent of having her be a disenfranchised voice in a world that doesn't care about her. Whether it's her brother signing over her rights (effectively robbing her of consent in a medical situation), her treatment at the hands of the medical and legal establishment, or the ways in which she is constantly mistrusted, disbelieved and outright mocked, it's clear that not only are people like Connie out there (and even today, in the 21st century, they did not miraculously vanish in the 80s), but they are still muted, ignored and treated as barely human.
Slowly, it becomes obvious just how much of an indictment against society this novel is. It's not just about the utopian future of Mattapoisett, it's also about the fact that we are still a long way off from it. We are a society fixed on material gain, on acquisition at all costs, and on equating happiness with having "things", rather than love, self-betterment, community and acceptance. Luciente is not just a spokesperson for the future, she is also someone who genuinely hopes that Earth is heading towards that glorious future. For Connie, it's an eye-opening experience, and for me it was a chance to think further on how many are silenced daily, and the war that those in power wage against those with less or nothing.
For me, this is a book to revisit. It's feminist literature, but it's also a manifesto for those without voices, it's a novel about human dignity, hope, and the endurance of the human spirit. Ultimately, it has moved me to my core, and it's perhaps one of the best books to end the year on. In a year in which I found myself looking as we continually lose freedoms, while also being further silenced by those who do not wish to listen, Piercy gives me the vision of a future of equality, understanding and love. And perhaps the best thing to take away from this is not so much the ending for Connie, but the ending I would like to see for our world and society: one in which the value of a human being is simply in their being alive, not in their race, gender, sexuality, materials gains or work.
March 25, 2008
This is one of those books you either buy into, saying, yes, what a wonderful world it could be, or you think, what a load of shit, piled high and steaming. This is utopia as seen through the eyes of a fourth-grader, except that it was written by a grown woman taking a swing at science-fiction and missing big-time. The protagonist is a woman and Latina, which ought to make her automatically bullet-proof against any criticism, intelligent or not, but I never bought into how she ended up being oppressed in the first place unless being a woman and Latina automatically makes you oppressed. Since any happy-ending would be entirely out of character with the book (or with being a woman and Latina), the ending was fairly obvious, especially to anyone who'd seen "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The utopia was impossibly good, the real world was impossibly bad, both were laid on thick, and the victimization was complete. One of those books which doesn't make you feel bored so much as angry for insulting your intelligence and wasting your time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 11, 2019
iyi bir eser fakat icerik olarak oldukca uzucu.cok zaman gecti okuyali . elimdeki zaten ilk baski .
October 2, 2020
A book that is truly of its time (so, so '70s), this has not necessarily aged all that well. Especially not when compared to other feminist science-fiction of the period, such as that by Le Guin, Russ, and Tiptree.
Piercy's righteously angry, forthrightly feminist time-travel tale addresses a lot of injustices but not always in a way that seems effective or even particularly respectful now. Mexican-American protagonist, Connie Ramos, all too often reads like a stereotype rather than a living, breathing person, and her situation, as a woman on welfare and someone marked as mentally ill and a child abuser, descends constantly into something perilously close to misery porn. Every man in her life is abusive, incarcerated, or a criminal, and the women are little better. Connie and her entire life quickly come to seem like a prop for Piercy's politics and even though I agree with the author's conclusions, that does not make the character or her family/friends seem more convincing.
Fortunately, the book does have a time-travel aspect that is refreshing, one I did very much enjoy, even as I realized how similar it was to other fictional feminist Utopian societies of the 1970s. Mattapoisett, the future society Connie mentally travels to throughout the book, is beautifully drawn. Connie sees it as primarily agrarian but Piercy makes it clear that this is a technologically sophisticated society that also believes in keeping close to the earth. One of the more intriguing things about Connie's sojourns in the future is how incurious she is and how often she appears to misread the level of development and technological know-how of the society she sees as devolved. This fundamental misunderstanding between her and her guide in the future, Luciente, is both fascinating and rather sad. While Connie is exposed to Mattapoisett in its many different aspects throughout the book, I never got the feeling that she grasped how advanced this society was compared to her own or even why it was so much better or at least more liveable.
Piercy includes a brief dystopian interlude as Connie attempts to reach out to her future friends and ends up instead somewhere rather awful, but that's almost a throwaway and nothing about it feels particularly real or well-imagined. It's certainly nothing like the kind of bone-chilling, horrible, all too plausible futures Russ or Tiptree could bring to life.
Connie's final actions are controversial. Personally, I did not find them effective or even all that interesting and the last pages felt like a cop out.
Overall, this is a significant book, one that speaks clearly of its time and is interesting and even essential because of that, but it's not an especially "good" book and if you're not studying feminist science fiction or political fiction of the latter half of the last century, you may not need to read it.
Piercy's righteously angry, forthrightly feminist time-travel tale addresses a lot of injustices but not always in a way that seems effective or even particularly respectful now. Mexican-American protagonist, Connie Ramos, all too often reads like a stereotype rather than a living, breathing person, and her situation, as a woman on welfare and someone marked as mentally ill and a child abuser, descends constantly into something perilously close to misery porn. Every man in her life is abusive, incarcerated, or a criminal, and the women are little better. Connie and her entire life quickly come to seem like a prop for Piercy's politics and even though I agree with the author's conclusions, that does not make the character or her family/friends seem more convincing.
Fortunately, the book does have a time-travel aspect that is refreshing, one I did very much enjoy, even as I realized how similar it was to other fictional feminist Utopian societies of the 1970s. Mattapoisett, the future society Connie mentally travels to throughout the book, is beautifully drawn. Connie sees it as primarily agrarian but Piercy makes it clear that this is a technologically sophisticated society that also believes in keeping close to the earth. One of the more intriguing things about Connie's sojourns in the future is how incurious she is and how often she appears to misread the level of development and technological know-how of the society she sees as devolved. This fundamental misunderstanding between her and her guide in the future, Luciente, is both fascinating and rather sad. While Connie is exposed to Mattapoisett in its many different aspects throughout the book, I never got the feeling that she grasped how advanced this society was compared to her own or even why it was so much better or at least more liveable.
Piercy includes a brief dystopian interlude as Connie attempts to reach out to her future friends and ends up instead somewhere rather awful, but that's almost a throwaway and nothing about it feels particularly real or well-imagined. It's certainly nothing like the kind of bone-chilling, horrible, all too plausible futures Russ or Tiptree could bring to life.
Connie's final actions are controversial. Personally, I did not find them effective or even all that interesting and the last pages felt like a cop out.
Overall, this is a significant book, one that speaks clearly of its time and is interesting and even essential because of that, but it's not an especially "good" book and if you're not studying feminist science fiction or political fiction of the latter half of the last century, you may not need to read it.
Shelved as 'xx-dnf-skim-reference'
January 15, 2020Brilliant for its time. I may have loved it then. Or maybe not, because I was naive about brutality to women, about racism, about prostitution, welfare, mental hospitals, homosexuality, poverty, etc. Consuelo's suffering is horrible and now that I know more about such issues I don't want to read about it in my fiction. Especially at such length. Especially because the women have absolutely no agency. Even at the end, Consuelo muses that if "they" had left her just one thing to love, she would go on being meek, done anything, taken any abuse.... I just can't empathize.
There's def. some brilliant bits here. I mean, I read to p. 80 and skimmed towards the end. I found someone trying to get "Connie" to say 'sit' instead of 'seet' but it's subtly revealed that she could only say "Consoolo."
And consider this line near the beginning: "Into the asylum that offered none, the broken-springed bus roughly galloped."
But I could find none of the kind of SF that I prefer - (most) early feminist literary SF is not my thing because it (often) doesn't consider that men were (are) also subject to expectations & pressures, and are real people, and are potential partners instead of enemies.
Also this reminds me of Sultana's Dream, a simple comparison of two societies... I've already said how the brutality of Consuelo's familiar life is written about at length, and I guess there's kind of a story there, but I don't see a story developing in the future as it seems to be all about them explaining to her how much better it is to live in their Utopia... I don't even see that I missed anything about how that Utopia came to be. Certainly something huge had to have happened for them to forget concepts like "father" and "police." (Yes, they apparently have records of those concepts in archives, but don't children learn any history? Doesn't anyone read any classic literature?)
Thank goodness we've made a lot of progress since the day when this was published.
I wouldn't mind reading a book discussion of this. But only if I could lurk, or maybe ask questions, not if I were expected to actually finish reading the darn thing.
There's def. some brilliant bits here. I mean, I read to p. 80 and skimmed towards the end. I found someone trying to get "Connie" to say 'sit' instead of 'seet' but it's subtly revealed that she could only say "Consoolo."
And consider this line near the beginning: "Into the asylum that offered none, the broken-springed bus roughly galloped."
But I could find none of the kind of SF that I prefer - (most) early feminist literary SF is not my thing because it (often) doesn't consider that men were (are) also subject to expectations & pressures, and are real people, and are potential partners instead of enemies.
Also this reminds me of Sultana's Dream, a simple comparison of two societies... I've already said how the brutality of Consuelo's familiar life is written about at length, and I guess there's kind of a story there, but I don't see a story developing in the future as it seems to be all about them explaining to her how much better it is to live in their Utopia... I don't even see that I missed anything about how that Utopia came to be. Certainly something huge had to have happened for them to forget concepts like "father" and "police." (Yes, they apparently have records of those concepts in archives, but don't children learn any history? Doesn't anyone read any classic literature?)
Thank goodness we've made a lot of progress since the day when this was published.
I wouldn't mind reading a book discussion of this. But only if I could lurk, or maybe ask questions, not if I were expected to actually finish reading the darn thing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,358 reviews