ehab-tsai

I loved this story for about the first half of the book. Despite the fact that I'd be taken out of the story every time it switched characters, I was engaged by all four story lines, so I happily fell right back into the story after the jolting switch. However, somewhere between half and three-quarters of the way through the book, things began to move faster and faster. Piercy began to gloss over events, describe instead of show, and generally move from novel-style writing to biography-style writing. This was extremely disappointing, especially after much of the novel had been excellent and well-written. At the very end, Piercy even went so far as to quickly describe the rest of each character's life in just a few pages. What I enjoyed most about the book was the history of women's rights in the US and I liked thinking about it in light of the statements briefly made by Barbara Ehrenreich in "Bright-Sided" about the basis of positive thinking coming from repressed women of the late 19th century. Themes: feminism, New York, American dream, suffrage, 19th century, immigration, gender roles, poverty

2022-11-14 16:55