, and depressed (by the fact that there was so much potential in this feminist science fiction (!) novel. The central character is Connie who is on the edge of society (I don't know about time) and going downhill and leading an increasingly dysfunctional life.As the book opens Connie is desperately trying to save her niece Dolly from her pimp/fiance. At the same time she is receiving visits from Luciente - it turns out that Connie has the ability to 'catch' people from the future, and soon Luciente transports her to this place in the future where a New World has been created - where women have given up breast feeding, giving birth and gender lines are blurred. Nuclear family structures have disappeared and political structures transformed. Meanwhile Connie has been institutionalised and subjected to a welter of treatments within a variety of hospitals in New York.
The trouble is the book is a mess, it is neither one thing nor another. The Utopian Society Marge Piercy creates is flimsy and confused, there is a pathetic attempt at a developed different language. The characters are stereotyped - all the men bad and power crazed the women (in the present at least) are victims. The descriptions of the hospitals are superficial, and the denouement is no real surprise. Surely this book is poor feminism and bad science fiction - if it is true science fiction. Rating? 4/10
