Marge Piercy

In the early eighties, when I lived in London, I was walking home from somewhere when I came upon a little bookshop on one of the side streets. I had never seen it before. I went in as I was wont to do on passing a bookshop. I found the place crammed with books. The isles between the shelves were narrow. Tables were overflowing. I walked around browsing the spines of the books occasionally pulling one out of the shelf for a closer look.

So I walked and browsed thinking I should go as I did not have much money. As I was walking through the shop on my way out one title on the spine of a small book caught my eye. I had walked past it and had to take a step back to take it out and look at it. I had never heard of the writer, had no idea about the kind of books per wrote. But I had to have that book. Just the thought of dancing an eagle to sleep kept me mesmerised on the spot. That is how I found Marge Piercy. My first ever book by per was this little book Dance the Eagle to Sleep. It was published in 1970, the year I came to UK.

Marge Piercy is one of my very favourite writers. Per is the most versatile writer I know. Pers works include novels in various genres, poetry, essays and at least one play written with pers husband. One of the novels is also written with pers husband.

I copied a list of the novels from a web page (www.margepiercy.com). I have read all of them apart from the first one which I have never seen anywhere. If I had seen it I would have it.

Many of Marge Piercy's books are about the lives of women set within the real historical periods. They are informed by Marge Piercy's own involvement in the political movements of pers time. Some are set in the fifties and sixties, others in the more recent times. All bring those times and the political struggles alive very vividly through the lives of the characters and the parts they play in the events.

Three of the novels are set in earlier historical periods. Gone to Soldiers is the best novel about a war I have ever read. It is set in the second world war which is seen through the eyes of the ten different characters as they live through the war. City of Darkness, City of Light brings alive the French Revolution in the eighteenth century. It also is told through various characters taking part in the revolution. Sex Wars begins with the year 1868, but has three chapters looking back to a few earlier years, and ends with the first few years of the nineteenth century. The events in this novel also unfold through a few main characters based in real individuals like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull and Anthony Comstock and one based on general histories Jewish immigrant experiences.

Two of Marge Piercy's novels can be classed as science fiction. I think that is the genre of Woman on the Edge of Time and Body of Glass. In Woman on the Edge of Time the main character is in a psychiatric hospital in present and travels to the future world of social and ecological harmony. Body of Glass portrays a somewhat different future where rigidly controlled environmental corporate domes dominate and a few free towns have to fight for their survival, a world where information is the most important commodity. In this world the main character creates a cyborg to protect pers free town, a little like a golem which was brought to life to protect the inhabitants of a Jewish ghetto in the Prague of 1600. Body of Glass is He, She and It in the list below.

The list of novels:

GOING DOWN FAST, Trident, l969; paperback, Pocketbooks, l97l.
DANCE THE EAGLE TO SLEEP, Doubleday, l970; paperback, Fawcett l97l.
SMALL CHANGES, Doubleday, l973; paperback, Fawcett l974.
WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME, Knopf, l976; paperback, Fawcett, l977.
THE HIGH COST OF LIVING, Harper and Row, l978; paperback, Fawcett,l979.
VIDA, Summit, January l980, paperback Fawcett, l98l.
BRAIDED LIVES, Summit, February l982; paperback Ballantine/Fawcett l983.
FLY AWAY HOME, Summit, February 1984; paperback Ballantine/Fawcett 1985.
GONE TO SOLDIERS, Summit, May 1987; paperback Ballantine/Fawcett May 1988.
SUMMER PEOPLE, Summit, June 1989; paperback Ballantine/Fawcett June 1990.
HE, SHE AND IT, Knopf, October 1991; paperback Ballantine/Fawcett January 1993.
THE LONGINGS OF WOMEN, Fawcett, March 1994.
CITY OF DARKNESS, CITY OF LIGHT, Fawcett, Oct. 1996. Trade paperback, 1997.
STORM TIDE (with Ira Wood), Fawcett, 1998.
THREE WOMEN, Morrow, Oct. 1999.
THE THIRD CHILD, Morrow/HarperCollins, 2003.
SEX WARS, Morrow/Harper/Collins, 2005

genesis by Karin Slaughter

This is the new novel by Karin Slaughter, published this year. In this novel the writer brings together Sara Linton one of the main characters from some previous novels and the detectives Faith Mitchell and Will Trent from the novel fractured, published last year. In some ways the title genesis is indicative (well, it would be, wouldn't it!) of various new beginnings in the novel. Sara Linton's life is in a way beginning again after the horrible and shocking ending of the novel Skin Privilege. There is a beginning of a life as one character discovers pers pregnancy. However, that is not the only new thing in the life of this character; per also has to learn to cope with a chronic disease which per was diagnosed with at the beginning of the book. Add to all this the beginnings of these new relationships between the main characters. Enough of new beginnings ... no way!

The book is a detective novel, a murder mystery with a serial killer at large. Like all Karin Slaughter's novels it is well constructed to keep the reader's interest to the end. The characters are interesting, real human beings, and the developing relationships between them kept me absorbed and wanting to know more. I want to meet them all again in another novel.

Some difficult topics touched in the novel are diabetes, bulimia and anorexia. Some possible causes for these are posed - another genesis theme. The reader is also given a glimpse of the murderer's childhood. It led my mind to think on the nature of evil and how a person can become such. Is it possible for a person to be born evil? The old nut of nature versus nurture.

The mother / child relationship is an important thread in the book. Like everything else it seems that that relatioship can bring about good or bad in a person. It can perhaps literally save a person's life or possibly destroy it.

A very good read.