The Jigsaw Woman

by Kim Antieau

Created from the bodies of three different women as a mistress for her evil doctor, Keelie sets out on a quest to find her true self and the earth's primordial truths, journeying to the paradise of the Amazons. Reprint.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

352 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Kim Antieau is the author of several novels and short stories for adults and teenagers, including Mercy, Unbound. She graduated Eastern Michigan University and lives with her husband, poet Mario Milosevic, in the Pacific Northwest. Aside from writing books, she works as a librarian.

Reviews

[Lowed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know I am way behind reading books in the fantasy and sci-fi genre. I'm not sure if there was a big fuss about this when this book came out in 1997, but this sure has a fresh voice in the fantasy/sci-fi lit. And that's even after reading so much Le Guin and- well, one book from Atwood. Antieau did pull this through with ease!

A real entertaining read!

[whimsicalmeerkat · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 benevolent goddess-worshipping matriarchies

What the hell did I just read? Speculative feminist fiction meets Frankenstein with a strong underlying theme of incest and rape. Bah.

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh, the many ways I hated this one. First there's the creepy rapey, near necrophiliac prologue. I would have pulled out there, but this book was a gift from a friend who counts it as a favorite. Next strike was the voice of the narrator. The premise of this book is that its heroine is a updated, near contemporary Frankenstein monster. She's been put together out of three dead women, and has the scars to prove it. It might have been easier to believe in Keelie if we had more distance from her--but her first person voice? Well, first I just can't believe this is a real woman who has been through anything like this, and then I believe she's an absolute idiot:

I went to him. His fingers touched mine. I wanted to drop into his arms. Yes, this was the reason for my existence. Him. It had to be.

I smiled. Pierced together to be a love machine for this gorgeous hunk of a man.

Later she has sex with this guy with a hairy back who asks her not to turn on the lights. And when Victor (his real name, and she thinks of him as "Frankie") is puzzled the next day by her references to them having made love, she's still clueless someone else took advantage of her. After this, a woman named Lillith--an obvious jealous rival--tricks her, but Keelie still believes what she has to say. Riiiiiight. I couldn't believe they had really attached a working brain to her body. Oh, and just about every male in the book is a sexual predator or abuser.

But then the fatal thing? The clanging New Age feminist Pagan twaddle where we're told how once upon a time women ruled the Earth and there was World Peace! The last straw was on page 79 where I was told nine million were killed during the "Burning Times" "because the women remembered a time when god wasn't in heaven and women and nature were sacred." First, we're talking about most probably 40,000 and at most 100,000 people who were executed as witches over about a 500 year period. And not all of them were women--a good number, maybe a quarter of them, were men. There's no evidence it had anything to do with Paganism either. Or that paganism has ever been linked with egalitarianism or matriarchy. Or that ancient times were ever more peaceful than our own other than they didn't have the population or technology to pull off genocide with our panache. But goodness they tried. Look up Pagan Roman history sometime.

So, as far as I'm concerned, what we have here is a badly written ill-conceived book filled with neopagan propaganda. There were interesting questions raised about what was really going on with Keelie, but by page 100 I couldn't stand the thought of lasting to page 340 to find out. Hell, I just couldn't stand her.

As I said, a friend of mine does adore this book. She says there are few books out there that hit the spot for her when it comes to her own Pagan beliefs. That there are fantasies out there that might reflect some, that have elements of the paranormal or Goddess worship, but that isn't the same thing. I hold unorthodox views myself in politics, and there was a time especially early on when a kind of "libertarian pornography" appealed to me just for the pleasure of seeing my own beliefs reflected in a fictional world, although these days I don't like books that are too preachy even when they do reflect my own beliefs. And if they are preachy, then they better have strong enough virtues in the writing to make up for it. So I do get the appeal of this sort of book for some. But this book most definitely doesn't do it for me.

[Kate M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like The Female Man, this falls in the category of "feminist speculative fiction that I really wanted to love, but didn't." The main character, Keelie, is created out of the body parts of three different dead women. She leaves the house of her creator, Victor, and goes off to find herself. Promising premise, but I wish the quest had involved more actual adventures and fewer dream journeys into history where characters share names/identities with characters from the present without necessarily having the same personalities or roles to play. I wasn't keen on Antieu's choppy writing style, and the messages were often anvilicious. (Also, minor spoiler here, all the joyous sacred menstruation in the section set in the idealistic prehistoric matriarchy made me roll my eyes. I don't think it's purely a patriarchal construct that bleeding and cramps are unpleasant.) Still, despite all my criticisms, Keelie's emotional journey was effective and moving. I appreciated that while the male characters occasionally did terrible things (consciously or just taking for granted their role in the patriarchy), only one is presented as truly irredeemable and ugly to the core. The female characters are the core of the novel, and seeing multiple female characters who aren't just competing over a man is always welcome in SF.

[Sue Chant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tiptree longlist 1996

[Ruby Hollyberry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the events in this are loosely based on the feminist "false history" of widespread matriarchal pacifist Goddess-worshippers in ancient times. I wouldn't take it seriously as historical fiction. As science fiction/fantasy it is wonderful. The protagonist is literally a human being put together out of three different women's bodies, frankenstein-style. She has been created as the fulfillment of the fantasy of a man who loved all three women and lost them. Her quest is first to find out about these women's lives and who they all were, and then becomes a magical journey to collect the best of their relationships and what they learned while they were alive and take it back into the crucial past life when all the characters in the book were together before and make it all come out better this time. Sounds crazy? It really works, and the question of what defines a woman's identity (child? mate? parent? rebellious youthful decisions?) is explored from all sorts of angles in a very innovative way.

[steffy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably the third time I've read this book, the last time being in my early 20's. It's certainly not that great of a story, and it's not along the usual of what I read nowadays, but for a guilty pleasure quick (and I do mean quick) read, this one gives you a lot of bang for your buck.

It is definitely steeped in a lot of mythology, which greatly interested me as a teen, and a whole lot of sex, and who wasn't interested in that as a teen?

Overall, not the most high quality literature, and I don't foresee myself hanging on to it for another read in the future, but I do give it 3 stars for some cheese entertainment and engaging readership.

[Flitterkit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous book that takes a interesting view on history and reincarnation.

[Melanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Complete and utter TRIPE. Ugh; I'm STILL angry I read that book. Got it for a dollar. Paid too much!

[Kat Heatherington · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had kept this book because I read it in high school and found it really interesting at the time, but I hadn't re-read it since then. It's probably best if read by adolescents; as adult literature, it's terrible. Didactic, naive, heavy-handed. It can't maintain a consistent tone, but vacillates wildly in narrative tone whenever the setting changes - but then will switch back without warning. Narrative whiplash. Its vision of the past is idealistic and foolish. And its take on gender is incredibly simplistic, problematic and unexamined. The final nail in the coffin is the 20th century pagan propaganda - folks, nine million women did NOT die during the witch-hunts. That number belongs to the Jews, in the Holocaust. Let's do less appropriation of everyone else's pain, shall we? It drives me nuts to see that tripe repeated, and her vision of pre-Mycenaean Greek society is insufficiently researched and simplistic to the point of idiocy. "If we go far enough back in the past, everything will be the way I wish it was and all social ills of every description will be magically resolved!" Argh.

This one is heading for a thrift store.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Jigsaw Woman is in essence what I would call "the more poetic, yet lesser Mists of Avalon." That is not a detriment, as I love Mists of Avalon, but it still felt like a story that has been told better before. There are lots of neat ideas in the book unique to it, so don't think I'm completely dismissing the book.

That being said, where it is lesser, it really sticks out. Keelie feels way too perfect after she realizes that she is being suppressed by society and it feels like it's trying to convert people to Wikka. Not the worst thing to do, but again, Mists of Avalon managed to present a witch religion while bringing forth problems. It just didn't feel like propaganda, this did.

I still enjoyed it and I'd recommend it to feminists who can handle a book that goes to some dark places.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trigger warning: rape and incest
Keelie wakes up after being made out of three other women--women who died under suspicious circumstances. Is her creator, Victor, the good guy or a bad guy? She has to travel backward in time, to the 16th century and to an early unnamed civilization, to find out.

[Barbara ★ · Rating 1 out of 5]

What utter shite! An absolute waste of an afternoon reading.

[Giselle · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF'd 62 pages in

[Katy Lohman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it. Must find and reread. I was never bored.

[Mistiemae1 Downs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book of all time and deeply personal to me. I very rarely read fiction books more than once, but my copy of Jigsaw Woman has been in my collection for more than 10 years and has been read at least that many times by me as well as having been passed to my friends, family, and even a few college professors.

The book is filled with mythological and archetypal imagery that guides the reader through a fantastic, sometimes harrowing, journey right alongside the main character, Keelie. The first 80 pages or so had me shocked and disgusted and filled with despair but unable to put the book down. By the end I was weeping and filled with happiness and grief and love and beauty. Regardless of the historical accuracy of the past which Ms. Antieau portrays, Jigsaw Woman makes you *want* that past, *want* that for the present and the future. Thank you, Kim Antieau, for writing a book that changed my life!

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story itself was pretty good, but the one thing that dragged the book down was the language. A very brute, and not so 'sofisticated' language that matched poorly with the storyline if you ask me. If it wasnt for this the story would be fantastic and the book itself is pretty unique, just wished for a better matching language.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides]

I like the way the author has tried to weave together fairy tales, Frankenstein, and mythology. (And history, or in this case herstory.) But this book is too weird and creepy for me.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very strange book.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very odd book. I should return it to Liz sometime.

[Rogieleen Antolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

ASTOUNDING Book! Out o the ordinary.