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Rating:  - I can't lie, I sobbed....
I am a cataloging librarian and was working on Marge's latest novel when I decided to read up on her other books. As a new cat owner and a passionate woman I was attracted to this autobiography. Rarely do we ever see a memoir of a famous author's pets! I have to honestly say this is the best autobiography I have read in years. Yes, the language isn't perfect, just like the author, but it is a beautiful tale. I couldn't be more oppisite, not to mention from a totally different generation, then Ms. Piercy but I could still heartfully relate to her emotions. Her poems are treats and magically written. Yes, she does jump around and mentions things several times at different parts of the book but isn't that the way we speak of a memory? She is honest and wants you to become her companion, not a distance audience. If you have a pet you will relate to her heartfelt goodbyes to her beloved children. She keeps mentioning how she does not regret never having children, however this whole piece is her relationships with her 4 legged kids!:) What a beautiful, sincere and talented woman she is - I hope to one day meet her (update: I did! And brought this book. She told me that rarely do people bring this one when they meet her, she thought it was magical). I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an open soul.
Rating:  - Piercy's view of Piercy
Like most autobiographies of famous folks this book is best in the part before she become Marge Piercy, famous feminist author. She gives a straight picture of her life growing up in a working class and lower middle class areas of Detroit in the forties and early 1950s which is my favorite part of the book. There is the toughness and rawness of working class life, the ambiguousness of sexuality, and some of the stark hard knocks realities of the utter cruelty of children, and the far distance parents are.
The second favorite part of the book is her discussion of her hard struggling days attempting to be, refusing to be, being knarled at being a proper young middle class wife in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as her fight to become a writer and not a literature academic.
Marge does very well in those areas. Once she gets to around 1966 (where I came into this movie) she just goes too darned fast. Instead of taking time to narrate things, she starts giving her opinions about things. I am familiar with the places and people and things she speaks about in New York in the late 1960s, but I wonder if someone one who wasn't there would be able to follow what she talks about.
This book says almost nothing about Piercy as a writer except how she fought to write in her life in college, how writing saved her and gave her back her world in her hard days after her first marriage ended, and the general fight to have time to write and not have to do other stuff to earn a living after she became "established."
Yet, she never talks about different writers who inspired her, how she actually works, how she stands on disputes over techniques, how she sees her poetry and her fiction, or how she answers the questions that many of us have about the two Marges, the ham fisted strong willed plot boiling fiction writer who does the job and goes on without much verbal flare or subltety and the delicate, sensitive, lyrical poet she has always been, although even in the poem's The Marge's mastery of plain talk from the heart runs through.
I haven't said anything about cats. The cats in this book are not a gimmick. If you read the book--I won't spoil it--you will understand that from childhood, cats have been a special part of her life and identity. It is really necessary to know her for her to explain the relationships she has had with each of the cats that has inhabited her life. Just as necessary as for her to explain each of her parents and her husbands.
I confess to be an unbiased fan of Marge Piercy as both a writer and a person whom I admire. For me, this book gives more sense to different autobiographical threads in her work and clarifies confusions I had about her age (I thought she was about 10 years younger than she is from the times I have seen her, from all the good things I know she has done for people I know, always behind the scenes never trying to get the credit she is due).
Yet, I am not sure how interesting this would be for someone who is not a Piercy fan.
I would recommend that the reader who likes the pre-success part of Marge's story read her two more autobiographical novels Braided Lives and Small Changes. These were among her first books and seem to be neglected these days. There is a lot of meaning in both of those books. In fact, I used to read Braided Lives annually, or when I was in a tight fix personally--stolen cars, lost girl friends, fear of losing my job.
Rating: - Painful truthfulness
Marge Piercy is well-known for her poetry and for her semi-science fiction novel "Woman on the Edge of Time." She has won literary awards and is certainly an American woman writer of great note. Her honesty and brutal clarity in rendering her memoirs is that more startling, as much of it is unpleasant and she hardly spares herself.
Piercy grew up in a lower class Detroit neighborhood, and was brutally beaten by her father while her needs as an adolescent girl were pretty much ignored by her mother. She found love in girl gangs, had illicit sex with both girls and boys, and yet was accepted to University of Michigan, the best public university in the state. Her career there was as an outsider--she was not the typical well-off, middle class sorority or dorm co-ed with cashmere sweaters and pearls. Instead, Piercy started the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and wrote, winning the prestigious Hopwood writing award at U of M.
Her writing career spanned the times she belonged to communes, then became disenchanted with the increasingly dogmatic Marxist left movement in the 60's. She bounced from Europe to New York to Boston, to Cape Cod, now her home.
In all her writing, Piercy has an uncanny ability to describe her minute observations of place and feeling, a gift attributes to her emotional mother. She expresses the anger at her distant and brutal father, whom she obliquely blames for her mother's death (she had a stroke and he did not call the ambulance service until he had meticulously picked up every fragment of a fluorescent bulb she had broken during her fall.) Her "open marriage" is described with all the ambiguity of such a relationship.
No one writes more grittily, more deeply observant than Piercy--the parts of "Woman on the Edge of Time" where the main character is struggling to leave an insane asylum, are so realistic and troubling, it helps to know Piercy from her memoirs to better understand her craft. If you like Piercy's writing, this memoir is a fine way to get to know her and to gain a better understanding of how she creates her fiction and poetry.
Rating:  - this book needs some editing
I was attracted to this book because I'm a woman and a cat-lover. I do not know anything about the author but based on review quotes was expecting excellent, entertaining writing. The content is engaging enough, but I noticed that she seems to retell details more often than I suspect she intended. Forgetfulness perhaps? In addition, many paragraphs seem poorly constructed, with her rambling on as though she's just thinking aloud. I'm just a bit disappointed and would not be likely to seek out her other works based on this.
Rating:  - Whining is not an attractive quality,
even in a writer of Piercy's stature. By the time I was a quarter of the way through the book, I was bored. By the time I was finished, I was ready to write Piercy off . . . but then I re-read her poetry, and was hooked again. So what if I didn't enjoy the story of her life? She probably wouldn't enjoy mine, either. But seriously, this is one autobiography that I'd rather pass in favor of the fiction and poetry.
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