Rating: 
Summary: Woman of creative mind
Review: Marge Piercy's novel "Woman on the edge of time" is the story of a Hispanic woman in crisis not only with the world, but herself. Her life is less than glamorous for most of her adulthood is spent either in a depressive, drug addict state or in a mental institution. She loses her beloved daughter due to abuse and she certainly didn't receive the "pick if the litter" when it came to her own family. The novel takes place in a mental ward where Connie has been reluctantly placed. She is about to become the victim of a horrific experiment against her will. In addition to this, Connie has made a friend Luciente who strangely enough has time traveled from the year 2137 and needs Connie's help to save her world and the future.
When Luciente is introduced into the novel you are faced with the question "Is this real or a hallucination?" Initially I felt like Luciente's utopia was real and Connie had been somewhat of a "chosen one" to save the world. As I read further and further into the novel I began feeling less sure. It seemed the things happening in this futuristic culture were running far too parallel with things that Connie wants in her own life. In Connie's world wants to see her daughter and longs for a lover. When she visits Luciente's world she gets those things. I feel that Connie has unconsciously hallucinated this utopia into existence.
Though time travel would be a historic event that a majority of the population would probably like to partake in, the thought of it actually happening makes me think of the movie "Back to the future" and all of the fictional qualities that film had. I feel the same about this novel. Though this books sci-fi quality makes for a good read, the believability of it actually happening is highly unlikely.
At the end of the novel you are faced with yet another difficult question, "Is Connie a murderer or is she acting in self defense?" To fully answer this question you need to put yourself in the situation. Picture this: you're being held in a mental hospital for months against your will, no one in your family will help you, and now part of your brain is going to be removed for experimentation...what would you do? Though what Connie does is technically murder, I think it is safe to say that her actions were truly out of self defense. A doctor has no right to conduct such a life altering experiment on a sane person with no consent. Though Connie is in a mental institution that doesn't make her some sort of lab rat. I truly feel that Connie's actions were in no way malicious or deranged. She was being robbed of her rights and her body so she did what she had to do to save her own existence.
In the last chapter Connie, after many attempts, is no longer able to contact Luciente's world. This gives evidence that it most likely was never there. Of course she is able to magically "travel in time" when she is in the confinement of a mental ward, what else does her mind have to do? Notice that once she is free and back to the normal world her contact with Luciente is broken. If anything, her hallucination of Luciente's world is what kept her from going crazy.
Rating:
Summary: "Falling in and out of the Future"
Review: Marge Piercy's wonderful novel, "Woman on the Edge of Time" is a classic glimpse of a utopian future. An ordinary working-class woman, struggling to stay afloat amid poverty and mental illness, falls in and out of an idyllic tomorrow. The characterizations of her, her sister, and other persona of the "real" world are drawn very well. So are the characters of the people who inhabit the future which she keeps visiting. I found the book a little hard to get into at first, but I recommend that folks give it a chance. Once you've waded in a ways, the warmth of the water (and of Piercy's humanity) will entice you to stay. Marge Piercy is a very good writer, as amply demonstrated by "Vida," "Gone to Soldiers" and "City of Light; City of Darkness." "Woman on the Edge of Time," is in the fine tradition of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" or William Golding's "Lord of the Flies."
Rating: 
Summary: a world worthy of the grandeur of life
Review: Marge wrote this book in the glow of the radicalization of the 1960s and 1970s. How light what she talks about seemed then, and how needed does this seem now. Right now the people who frame the discourses, own everything, buy the politicans, and do stealing and murder on an international basis, try to convince working people, people with a heart, people around the world that their choices are the only choices. In this book we find that so many of the limitations of our society can be sweetly transcended, whether we are talking about race, sex, money, adults children. This is not a dreamers book, but a book that talks about how life could simply be truly human with what we know, with what we can do, when the choices aren't dictated by patriarchy, when the choices aren't dictated by capitalism, when the choices are dictated by biollionaire liars, by men elected to presidencies who flew around in planes owned by Emron. Morever, consistent with every sentence Marge ever wrote, including things I think are just plain wrong, is a simple unromanticized, gut understanding that human beings are better than all the crap thrown at it and we will perserve, we will build a world worthy of the grandeur of life.
Rating:
Summary: Shining feminist SF from a forgotten time
Review: My interest in time travel dates back to earliest childhood, but this entry into the genre was first published at a time when science fiction was nowhere to be found in movies or television, and the written word was for the last time its primary home. "Woman" is in the category of works with Vonnegut, where the novel is not composed with the intentions of satisfying fans of a genre, but to address every person to come across it. This is its unparalleled strength. The universal theme of sacrifice and lonely courage against tyrannies make this novel one of the great, if often overlooked, masterpieces of the 1970s.
Rating:
Summary: Made me a Piercy Fan
Review: Read this for the same "Utopia/Dystopia" class - and was captivated. After having picked through a half dozen other books - I'm amazed at how Marge Piercy is able to write cover so many genres - from historical fiction to contemporary fiction to science fiction. I can say she's become one of my all time favorite writers - and personally most influential. This - probably one of her best works (also read, Gone to Soldiers). I don't want to give away too much of the story line - as it might spoil some of the fun of exploring the unique and creative storyline.
Rating:
Summary: Only the best
Review: This book is THE BEST BOOK EVER! It is a book that two people could read and think to completly different things. It also is an awakaning to our envirmental and social problems. This book gives two very real futures for this world, one horific and the other wonderful. I truly think that EVERYONE should read this book as it is enlightening and very interesting
Rating:
Summary: A feminist (hopeful) future!
Review: This is the story of a woman that travels into the future... and is dismissed as crazy because of her race, poverty, and her claims of a feminist, hopeful, future. I had to read this book for a college sex & gender class a few years ago... and out of all the feminist literature that i was required to read, this was my favorite. It's an entertaining story... but it harbors important messages. It's like a "Brave New World" or "1984" for the educated woman.
Rating:
Summary: Piercy presents a vibrant feminist utopia, an ideal future.
Review: This novel is a feminist classic; it could have been written
yesterday instead of twenty years ago. Rather than merely
complaining about sexism and patriarchy, Piercy envisions an
entirely new societal structure, giving us a worthy future to
strive for. Not only feminist, this novel embraces a
humanistic ideal, where the individual can attain his or her
("per," as Piercy would have it) full potential. Best of
all, Piercy's characters are fully drawn, riveting in their
complexity. These are people you long to know in a world
you long to visit. This is the book you long to read.
Rating:
Summary: Woman on the edge of insanity
Review: When I first started reading this book I was not at all interested in it for a variety of different reasons. There was the fact that the title was not at all appealing to me. Then I found out that this was a sort of scientific adventure and those types of books are not exactly my favorite. After reading this novel I now realize that I would have missed out on a great book.
Throughout the book I steadily believe that Connie was hallucinating because of the lack of substance that the character Luciente brought when she arrived and departed. Although I was almost sucked in to believing that she was really time traveling a couple of times. As far as the whole time traveling thing is concerned, I believe that we as in the human race an not that technologically advance to time travel and I really don't think that we will ever be.,
I would have love to live in Lucientes world considering I have seen what Gildinas world was composed of. In Lucientes world they live a simple and almost carefree life. Although I am a city boy I would pick Lucientes world of Gildinas world any day. As of today I would not like to live there because I don't even like living in this country town. Like I said before I am a city dweller; therefore the big buildings, smog and over crowdedness is a necessity for me to feel at home.
I also didn't like that there was no unconditional bond between a parent and child. To me this takes away most of the purpose of having a child. One thing that I did like was the fact that they were able to live there lives without pressure or judgment. For example in our society you people will look at you funny if you forty and you have several girlfriends. But in Lucientes world they got rid of marriage all together. Lucientes world is considered to be a utopia to me but I wouldn't want to live there. On the matter of Connie not being able to reach Lucent's world after she helps them can be explained in one phrase "There was a glitch in the Matrix."
Rating: 
Summary: Dreaming For Sure . . .
Review: Woman on the edge of time is a novel that combines sci-fi and drama. The main character Connie is a poor Hispanic woman who is disgusted by the sexism and racism of this present world. At the early pages of the novel Connie gets in a fight with her nieces' boyfriend, and was sent to a mental hospital. Connie is a very loving person who lost everything she ever had when her husband Claud dies in jail and her daughter was taken away from her by the government. The novel goes on by Connie being contacted by a woman from the future named Luciente. Luciente takes Connie to her time and thought her how to time travel, only Connie travels to the future through her mind while her body remains at the cold and ugly mental hospital. I don't not think that Connie is actually time traveling, as the matter of fact I think she Is hallucinating; this hallucination may be caused by her disgust of this world and wanting a change. To make a long story short Piercy's visualization makes it seem real.
In Luciente's world obviously things are quite different, it is not a future as we all imagine it is almost like the past but with some very advanced rules and regulations. In Luciente's world they have canceled out the existence government, racism, and sexism. Their main way of living is agriculture and they avoid all machines with exhausts to eliminate pollution. The other main difference from this world is that they do not reproduce like the present world does. While everyone is sexually bonded with each other they produce infants by biogenetics in another word from a tube. They raise their infants as a group of three until the infant is twelve years old, then the child moves out on his or her own. All this is very strange to Connie as it would be for all of us. Half way through the novel we will come to realize that Luciente's world is a parallel universe to another one.
In chapter fifteen Connie try to travel to Luciente's world but she falls in to this another universe which is the totally opposite world Luciente's. There she meets this woman named Gildina. Gildina's world has all the elements of the future we envision, Gildina is a contacted prostitute, and this world is equipped with robots and androids. In that world all the rich people live up in space and they control everything and everybody down on earth. The rich people live over three hundred years, they way they do that is they strip organs from the duds which are all people which or not controlled by them. As the novel goes on Connie realizes that she is the key of in these parallel (crux) universes. The scenario is that Connie gets scheduled to a brain surgery and if Connie allows it the future will become Gildina's universe and if she manages to stop the surgery the future will become Luciente's world. So Connie has to stop the surgery and she manages to do that by murdering the doctor who was try to operate on her.
Some people may argue that she killed the doctor on self defense but the way I see is, if one person takes the life of another it is a murder no matter what the case or intension is. At the end of the novel Connie get discharged from the mental hospital, he also loses her ability to travel in to the future she which is not she is a part of anymore. At the end of the day I think this whole story is a dream to Connie not real, putting as side that it was written to seem real and to Connie but travel to the future is impossible cause it did not happen yet but to the past there is a slight possibility, I think Connie is sleeping in her bed with her husband Claud and she going to wake up in the morning and realize it was all a dream. But after that night she will appreciate and cherish what she has now.
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