The Young in One Another's Arms

This characters in this novel are simultaneously mired in loss, turmoil, and the politics of the war in Vietnam, yet at their best come together, almost ethereally, to form a tight-knit family, if an unconventional one.
In the age of polyamory and gay marriage, the subtexts (and they are subtexts, this is no gay or even anti-war polemic) seem quaint. But having lived some of those years, it was easy to evoke the understated "radicalism" that underlay everyday life and conversation, the sense that improvement was possible, the starshine glitter of a deep blue sky.
Ruth is a Canadian woman in her 50's who is separated more or less from her husband, loves and supports her mother in law, and has lost both her daughter and an arm. She runs a show more boardinghouse, the nominal "mother", of characters most certainly on the lam from the US, another who is mentally challenged, and some student/drifters. The outside world has begun an incursion into this household as the book opens, as the home is being demolished for urban renewal.
The fast pace of the ensuing journeys, tragedy and triumphs won't give you much space to catch your balance, but the journey back into time is worth putting on the good shoes. show less

i have a really hard time with jane rule, it would seem. i really don't like her writing style. at all. it feels so clunky and convoluted and i have to reread sentences to know what she is saying. then sometimes she comes out with these little moments of great writing. i want her to be consistent.

this story had potential, i felt. commune style living in the late 70's, but i never cared about any of the characters at all. i wasn't invested in any of their stories or in the community they were creating. it was unforgivable, having tom almost rape mavis. and he had been the most likable character up until that point. i don't know why she threw that in. she was trying to make this sort of utopia across gender and race (and sexual show more orientation, but that was mostly unmentioned), which i can appreciate. but i didn't like the book, unfortunately. show less

I have the hardest time determining how I feel about Jane Rule. I get the sense from reading her that maybe she didn't quite know how she felt about herself. Her novels don't ever seem to really have endings, to me, which is probably why I read them all in a row in a month--I kept trying to reach a satisfactory conclusion. That said, I this is one of my favorites, the other being Memory Board. And even though "Desert Hearts" was an appalling film, Desert of the Heart is a pretty good book.

A moving story. Alternative family environment. A little sentimental, but not much.