Rating: 
Summary: A very poor choice
Review: Having bought this book after seeing it recommended in one of the amazon e-mails, I was incredibly disappointed.
The writing is poor, and the plot is not sufficiently compelling to encourage finishing the book (and I rarely am so bored that I don't bother). Doubtless this assessment will have its detractors. But if you enjoy good literature, don't bother with this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good story about a difficult and timely topic
Review: I almost didn't read Three Women, because Piercy's last five or six books have been disappointing to me; she almost seems to hate her characters. But with this book she is moving back on track. She feels genuine emphathy and respect for each of the three, very different female "archtypes", which is really what they are more than actual characters. The three generations of women live together, each with their own unique sets of cultural and societal baggage, getting on each other's last nerve, and finally being forced to accept and finally love each other. This is a book about a profoundly moving and important topic for many of us baby boomers: what will happen when our parents cannot take care of themselves anymore? If they are still mentally active but physically unable to live alone anymore? This is an extremely sensitive and thoughful examination of how a driven career woman, not at all close to her mother, must make very difficult choices. This is a book about dignity, family ties, and the right to die. By never letting her characters lapse into self-pity, Piercy has allowed me to respect each of them as individuals, even when I wanted to slap them upside the head. By the end of the book I was deeply moved and a little bit better able to face some of the difficult decisions facing these women. This is not a slick story or a particularly fashionable one. It is about growing up and letting go. It is both unstinting in its analysis of feminist types and gentle in its treatment of them, with all their flaws. In the end these are just ordinary people trying to live their lives in the best way they can.
Rating:
Summary: Good Novel, Awful Cover!
Review: I am identifying I know with the young woman in the book I just read and her grandmother. Her gram was a power. She was very political and very verbal until this incredible stroke that took her down. She could not reconcile herself to this person. She looked in the mirror and she did not see herself and she could not stand it (I know this feeling so well)- before this she had liked the power of her body and what it could do for her - her ability to take lovers and enjoy her body and the other person's. And now, she was suddenly a nothing. Her granddaughter on the other hand seemed to be an accident waiting for a place to happen. She was on this crash course to distruction but she did come to terms with who she was and where she planned to go - by the end of the story. I am so moved by the book that I can think of nothing else at this moment. I feel as though I have been living in their house this week and have also been supported by the one in the middle of this story - the daughter - the one who had to put the bread on the table while the mother fell apart and the daughter almost self-distructed. I know that some people do not like to read painful books or books that make then think. When their words and stories wrap around me partly with the silky feeling of a story I love, and partly scratching me into thinking - I know I have been inside a good book. I remember reading GONE TO SOLDIERS and loved it also. I have read others, too, and I am ready to go get all of her books again because her work is powerful. I could find myself in all of the women in the book at different times in the story. That was what kept me inside the story.
Rating:
Summary: For all Mothers, Daughters, and Grandma's
Review: I have learned so much from Marge Piercy's books and this one is no exception. I didn't always like the book because it is uncomfortable to read about a powerful woman so weakened by a stroke. And the young girl's lifestyle may turn off some readers. But the characters have stayed with me - I read this book when it was first released. Last summer, when my grandmother died after a fall that incapacitated her mind, this book came back to me. I found it amazingly helpful to view the accident from the perspective of the grandmother in this book. Marge Piercy is incredibly gifted. She brings readers into different worlds. Her books have helped me find the perspective and inner strength to be a strong person who can stand on her own.
Rating:
Summary: For all Mothers, Daughters, and Grandma's
Review: I have learned so much from Marge Piercy's books and this one is no exception. I didn't always like the book because it is uncomfortable to read about a powerful woman so weakened by a stroke. And the young girl's lifestyle may turn off some readers. But the characters have stayed with me - I read this book when it was first released. Last summer, when my grandmother died after a fall that incapacitated her mind, this book came back to me. I found it amazingly helpful to view the accident from the perspective of the grandmother in this book. Marge Piercy is incredibly gifted. She brings readers into different worlds. Her books have helped me find the perspective and inner strength to be a strong person who can stand on her own.
Rating: 
Summary: Underdeveloped Characters, Shallow Story
Review: I'm a longtime fan of Marge Piercy, ever since I devoured Gone to Soldiers, Woman on the Edge of Time and He, She and It. Another enjoyable read was Ms. Piercy's frank and affectionate memoir, Sleeping with Cats. This effort, however, didn't do much for me. I didn't feel emotionally involved with any of the characters and basically could have cared less what happened to them. I felt this was a superficial read; nothing gripped me at all. It's too bad; was it written in in a hurry? I won't give up on Ms. Piercy, though, and will keep an eye out for her future works.
Rating:
Summary: Underdeveloped Characters, Shallow Story
Review: I'm a longtime fan of Marge Piercy, ever since I devoured Gone to Soldiers, Woman on the Edge of Time and He, She and It. Another enjoyable read was Ms. Piercy's frank and affectionate memoir, Sleeping with Cats. This effort, however, didn't do much for me. I didn't feel emotionally involved with any of the characters and basically could have cared less what happened to them. I felt this was a superficial read; nothing gripped me at all. It's too bad; was it written in in a hurry? I won't give up on Ms. Piercy, though, and will keep an eye out for her future works.
Rating:
Summary: Another Unforgettable Piercy Offering
Review: Marge Piercy's books stay with you long after you've put them down. There are segments of many of her past books that have never left me, and "Three Women" has already joined the ranks of her finest, in my opinion. Piercy is a writer of such power that it is impossible to read her work and stay unmoved or uninvolved. In this case, her brilliant, poignant, and yet somehow defiant portrait of Beverly, the aging activist suffering the indignities of a stroke, are simply unforgettable. It made me explore another way of thinking...to look beyond my own sensibilities and dearly held beliefs into another area. But don't be put off. Like all of her books, Piercy's Three Women is a fast, fascinating, and worthwhile read. I would like nothing more than to sit in a quiet, cozy corner with Marge and just listen to her talk. She is a gift.
Rating:
Summary: In-Depth Portraits of Women
Review: Piercy's novel delves into the intertwined lives of three women: Suzanne, a successful lawyer; Beverly, her unconventional, activist mother; and Elena, her troubled daughter. Suzanne finds herself in the middle of a storm of emotions as she copes with her daughter returning home and her mother, incapacitated by a stroke, also joining the household. There are events in the past, layers of conflict and guilt, that bind these three women together. Gradually, the novel uncovers this history.
The great strength of this book is in the respect and space it gives to each of these three very different people. Beverly was a radical who worked for civil rights and unions. She was a powerful, dramatic figure. Now, following her stroke, she does not know how to cope with the loss of her vibrant energy.
Elena seems to exist on pure emotion, living for the thrill from one moment to the next, but her love for her grandmother brings out another side of her. As she cares for Beverly, she discovers that can find the strength in herself to help someone she loves.
Suzanne seems to be the hardest character to relate to. She is busy all the time, consumed with her career and household tasks. Her family feels burdensome to her, though she loves them. She wants badly to reconcile with her mother, Beverly, and find some point of connection, but time to do so is running out.
Rating:
Summary: Good Novel, Awful Cover!
Review: Poor Marge Piercy, her novels are so serious, and so political, and yet they are so often saddled with the most ridiculous cover art! Piercy has no equal in weaving multiple characters and plot lines into an intellectual page-turner. She's been doing it for thirty years. The central plot of this novel, although there are many side plots, concerns mom/grandma/daughter all living together after grandma has a stroke and daughter loses her job. It's quite a page-turner as we discover a mystery from the daughter's past, a relationship unfolding for the mother, and the difficulties encountered by the grandmother.
My only complaint with the book was that the portrait of the attorney's work did not ring true to me as an attorney, and I found the anecdotes of the grandmother's career as a union organizer to be rather cliched. (This character has been beaten up by Union bosses AND has been firebombed by the Klan AND....okay, we get the point, Marge.) However, this is still a first class read.
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