Woman on the Edge of Time
by Marge Piercy
|
|
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of this book.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
lists with this book
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 792)
Read in August, 2008
It has been a long time since I've read a Piercy book, and I am glad I found this one at the library. Woman On the Edge of Time crosses multiple ages and cultures, and calls into question notions of reality. The protagonist, Connie, is a diagnosed schizophrenic recently readmitted into a mental hospital. Life inside the hospital is dire - treatment is nonexistent, doctors are unavailable.
Fortunately for Connie, she has one form of escape. She's a catcher, and is able to speak with people fr...more
Fortunately for Connie, she has one form of escape. She's a catcher, and is able to speak with people fr...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2004
My "bus book" the last couple weeks (sue me, it's not that long a bus ride) was Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy. The story is about a woman who has been a mental patient, who now believes she is in contact with the distant future. On the surface, the book is nearly science fiction, and indeed in its use of drastically different surroundings as a means of examining our own society, it is. However it is also mystery, horror, sociology, and women's lib. I don't want to go into ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 1994
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 ...more
This novel also has some nice poetic moments. In one of the more illustrative passages, Connie's friends ...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
Read in April, 2008
recommended to Michi by:
the reading list of a "sociology through literature" courserecommends it for: anarchists, feminists, escapists, the hopeful, the cynical
Being one of the best books I've ever read, this novel beautifully balances a number of themes, including the ambiguous value of truth, the concept of sanity, gender as a construct, monogamy and traditional family structures, technology, the justice system, and utopia in general. The future society that Piercy creates, Matapoissett, is not an oversimplified world; she takes great care to show how any number of issues of equality might be managed, and her solutions may shock you. As someone who...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 1998
recommended to Dennis by:
Gladice (who will pay)recommends it for: anyone who likes bad sci-fi or worse chick-lit
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in January, 2008
Published in 1976, this book was remarkably prescient. The way that Piercy has structured her utopian community of the future is not too far off the direction that alternative communities have been moving since the '60s -- and which has only accelerated in recent years, with the greater focus on sustainability and alternate energy sources. She also does a nice job of contrasting the plausible future utopia with an equally plausible dystopia, in which everything is state-controlled, bio-enginee...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
Read in April, 2008
recommended to Brimate by:
Michelle Brittanrecommends it for: prisoners, insurrectionists, anarchists, feminists, people who want to get free now!
Woman of the Edge of Time is nuts. It's radical feminist sci-fi that's part future utopia, part powerful critique of current fucked-up society, part tale of liberation.
The whole text is engaging, but for some reason it took me a while to read it. The protagonist is a poor Chicana woman in New York labelled insane.
I'm on a feminist & utopian fiction kick and this is a wonderful addition. It's an amazing book and I think it is---or should be---a feminist/radical/sci-fi classi...more
The whole text is engaging, but for some reason it took me a while to read it. The protagonist is a poor Chicana woman in New York labelled insane.
I'm on a feminist & utopian fiction kick and this is a wonderful addition. It's an amazing book and I think it is---or should be---a feminist/radical/sci-fi classi...more
Like this review?
yes
2 comments
Read in February, 2008
70's feminist tentative-utopia. As that genre goes, i really like this one. It comes more from the gender fluid/ androgyny positive side of things than the essentialist "women are more nurturing shit", which i liked. And i liked that the main character was a mad woman and that madness was well explored, if slightly simplistically at times. I don't like it's anti-cityness or certain aspects of uniformity that it espouses, but it's pretty tolerable for the traditions it adheres to. ...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
social workers particularly those in the MH field
I just had a random moment of being totally touched by this book. I had to up my rating to 5-stars and re-evaluate the way I was conceptualizing this story. I'm feeling rather frustrated by the systems folks are forced into... maybe more later.
12/02/07
Oh my god. I *actually* finished a book. Let's all be shocked and amazed together.
Woman on the Edge of Time was quite good. I don't have the energy to write a full blown review, but suffice it to say I thoroughly enjoyed this Colin...more
12/02/07
Oh my god. I *actually* finished a book. Let's all be shocked and amazed together.
Woman on the Edge of Time was quite good. I don't have the energy to write a full blown review, but suffice it to say I thoroughly enjoyed this Colin...more
Like this review?
yes
2 comments
Read in May, 2008
This book is about a woman imprisoned in a mental hospital, who is not actually mentally ill enough to really need to be there, who finds herself able to contact a woman in the future and visit her small, farm-small-town-utopia future village. The sections of the plot about Connie's struggles with the mental hospital and institutions surrounding how she was treated there fascinated me, but the utopic future village got on my nerves because not enough plot really happened there. Connie's contin...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in October, 2004
There's a reason this one isn't in print any longer.
I read it for a Women's Studies class and it was...interesting. I liked the concept, but the premise/story starts with an insane woman. Strike number one. Feminist novels to change the way people think about women should NEVER start with questionable mental states. She lives in a relatively genderless utopia where men breastfeed and nurture, but it's difficult to figure out what's in her head and what's not. It's supposed to all seem s...more
I read it for a Women's Studies class and it was...interesting. I liked the concept, but the premise/story starts with an insane woman. Strike number one. Feminist novels to change the way people think about women should NEVER start with questionable mental states. She lives in a relatively genderless utopia where men breastfeed and nurture, but it's difficult to figure out what's in her head and what's not. It's supposed to all seem s...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in November, 2005
recommends it for:
feminists into science fiction
i read this book in a day because it was for college. it's really good though.
it's about this lady who sometimes travels into this utopian-egalitarian future. she lives in an insane asylum so you're not supposed to know if she's crazy or really time traveling. the end is a surprise.
i thought it was really interesting to read about what this author thought a feminist utopia would look like. i thought it was fun to agree or disagree with aspects of it and i unintentionally started designi...more
it's about this lady who sometimes travels into this utopian-egalitarian future. she lives in an insane asylum so you're not supposed to know if she's crazy or really time traveling. the end is a surprise.
i thought it was really interesting to read about what this author thought a feminist utopia would look like. i thought it was fun to agree or disagree with aspects of it and i unintentionally started designi...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
Read in January, 1997
recommends it for:
Jennifer K./people who are sometimes disappointed by Margaret Atwood
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 stigma...more
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 stigma...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
I bought this book because it's one of the better-known feminist utopian novels, along with Herland and Egalia's Daughters, both of which I've read. After buying it, I waited a year and a half before finally finishing it. I inevitably liked it better than I had originally thought I would, but I understand what kept driving me to put it down and forget about it for another few months before rediscovering it again for the next try. It's a "message" book, one that attempts t...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in February, 1998
This is one of my favorite books and one that had a pretty profound influence on me. I guess you could call the future society she imagines a "feminist utopia" (as I've seen in reviews on this site). When I read it for a Comparative Literature class I was impressed by the way the family unit and community itself were structured and functioned. And its really stuck with me a long time and seems to have grown with me subconsciously. I've read it a couple times since and the "utopia&...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
I read this one awhile ago, but in thinking about "Is there no place for me" I thought of this one. It's similar only in that it's a woman placed in a mental hospital against her will. But this woman's story is more of a fantasy story. She mentally moves back and forth between two worlds, neither seeming overly attractive at times, both having their dark moments. I won't give away too many more plot details, but the more I think about this book, the more I'd like to go back and re-r
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
This Sci-Fi book written in the 70s says much more about the optimism of that decade than it does about the utopian future that the protagonist psychically visits. This future is full of polyamory, men breastfeeding, bicycle riding, cultural and racial diversity, and plenty of drugs and parties. The main character is a Latina woman who is confined to a mental institution after being beaten by her sister’s pimp.
I enjoyed reading this book, but didn’t really get sucked into the story. I...more
I enjoyed reading this book, but didn’t really get sucked into the story. I...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2005
This book is an all-time favorite, although I think it's got one of the worst titles ever. The title is too simple for the story, which is incredibly intriguing, fantastical, inspirational and gripping. I think of this book often and contemplate the ideas that spin from it. It was written in the 1970s and still maintains exceptional and advanced poignancy in our current socio-environmental state. I greatly admire the use of instable time lines and the blur of inner and outer awarenes...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2001
We read an excerpt from this book in the intro to women's studies course that I took in college. I thought it was kind of freaky. The part we read included the part about men breastfeeding, and I thought that was gross. But I ended up reading the whole book a couple of years ago, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's really fascinating, espcially the part about the utopian society. I like the way the author never says for sure if the main character is really traveling to alternate universes or if s...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in July, 2008
This book was trip back into the distant time of the 1970s, when radically changing the world seemed much more possible in our lifetimes.
I think the best part of the book was looking at what steps a socialist society would need to take to break down sexism and patriarchy.
I particularly liked the book's nuanced view of the role of science. The future revolutionaries don't flinch from genetically modifying their crops and growing their babies in bottles.
I thought the ending was shoc...more
I think the best part of the book was looking at what steps a socialist society would need to take to break down sexism and patriarchy.
I particularly liked the book's nuanced view of the role of science. The future revolutionaries don't flinch from genetically modifying their crops and growing their babies in bottles.
I thought the ending was shoc...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
