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Going Down Fast: A Novel
When their neighborhood is marked for urban renewal, four tenacious city dwellers band together in the face of a wealthy and powerful institution
A local university plans to bulldoze and replace parts of a predominantly African American Chicago slum with student housing. But for those who live there, the affordable if run-down homes are havens for creativity and self-exploration, and a setting for developing meaningful relationships. Among the residents are Anna, a teacher; her lover, Rowley, a soul singer; and their friends, documentary filmmaker Leon and the beautiful yet mysterious Caroline. The university may have more money and political clout, but these determined young people aren’t willing to let the wrecking ball tear through their world without a fight.
Their relationships are strained and their convictions are tested as secrets are uncovered and they battle with a changing economic climate that jeopardizes their very way of life. The city has turned its back on them, and they have nothing left to lose. Bestselling author Marge Piercy combines social commentary and her talent for depicting characters’ emotions with unflinching precision in this novel that has as much to say about the consequences of gentrification as it does about the vulnerabilities of the human heart.
A local university plans to bulldoze and replace parts of a predominantly African American Chicago slum with student housing. But for those who live there, the affordable if run-down homes are havens for creativity and self-exploration, and a setting for developing meaningful relationships. Among the residents are Anna, a teacher; her lover, Rowley, a soul singer; and their friends, documentary filmmaker Leon and the beautiful yet mysterious Caroline. The university may have more money and political clout, but these determined young people aren’t willing to let the wrecking ball tear through their world without a fight.
Their relationships are strained and their convictions are tested as secrets are uncovered and they battle with a changing economic climate that jeopardizes their very way of life. The city has turned its back on them, and they have nothing left to lose. Bestselling author Marge Piercy combines social commentary and her talent for depicting characters’ emotions with unflinching precision in this novel that has as much to say about the consequences of gentrification as it does about the vulnerabilities of the human heart.
393 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1969
15 people are currently reading
71 people want to read
About the author
Marge Piercy
108 books931 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)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 15, 2009
Kind of disappointing in the end. I hated pretty much all of the male characters. This book is 40 years old but universities are still screwing over neighborhoods and their "part time" instructors in exactly the same way. It makes me feel a little hopeless.
September 2, 2025
In theory, I should have loved this book. I have liked most of what I've read previously by Piercy (which is a lot), the overarching political and social drama is right up my alley, I know the area of Chicago in question fairly well, etc. But... I did not like the writing style in this book (lots of fragmented sentences scattered around, so I had to keep rereading them to see if I missed a verb somewhere), I did not like the long philosophical descriptions and monologues that peppered the entire book, and I did not like or root for or empathize with a single character.
August 2, 2014
Not a book to put you in a hopeful frame of mind. Can't love any of the main characters. Can't love the story arc. Maybe my tastes have changed since I last read Marge Piercy. Maybe I'm not the wistful, idealistic young adult that saw the possibilities of "the revolution".
Want to read
December 30, 2011I swear I used to have this in my collection, but now I can't find it. Oh well. Found it on interlibrary loan, at least.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews