The Longings of Women

Interwoven tales of three women, an academic, a homeless woman and an aspiring working-class one. I liked this more than any of MP's for some time and am now struck by how many of her novels have lead characters which basically aren't very sympathetic or likeable. The first chapter or two seemed very formulaic but that impression soon went. If you like Piercy, you'll love this book; if you have never encountered her work, this would be as good a place as many to start.

I enjoyed this read about 3 very different women and how their lives unfolded due to their relationships with husbands. These relationships left each of these women longing to be loved, valued, and respected, which was not often the case as the relationships became too familiar, taken for granted. I like the way that each woman was of a different age in their lives e.g Becky, young and hopeful, whose husband was a loafer & sloth, whose mother despised Becky and felt that her son had married beneath him - Leila early middle years, whose marriage had lost its spark due to a husband who was an adultering show pony, but comfortable with having teh comforts of a hoem adn ever forgiving wife who finacialy kept the home fires burning. Then show more there is the older Mary, a devoted wife and home maker, whose husband had left her for a younger model, thus becoming homeless, unskilled, and feeling totally unloved by those around her. The streets became her home and she kept herself financially able with the small cleaning jobs of more affluent women. show less

as another reviewer noted, this book had repulsive characters in it. While the protagonist's (Leila's) husband was triggering, the author did weave an interesting plot and history of her .characters.

"She was too upset to eat [about her stinking husband's infidelity]. But she felt some satisfaction in the idea of doing a book on a woman who had murdered her husband. She knew that if Nick were there he would get round her, but he wasn't. So often he wasn't. She would digest her own anger, she would manage it as she always had. The fear of losing him had constantly forced her to dispose of her negative reactions towards what he did. Her anger toward him caused her the same sense of shame and secretiveness her mother had trained her to feel show more toward her sanitary napkins, that must not go into the family garbage, that must not be flushed down the toilet still clogged the pipes, but carried at once outside to the trash."

Becca, the one on trial for killing her husband, has her first boyfriend when she's in college, an ex-professor. Like so many other men, he just wants to use women. When she finds out, she's furious, and she gets her revenge!
"She called up the number on the front of his condo and thus got the agent's name, Nadine bavard, and the address of her office. She worked all the next week on a letter, heartfelt and full of remorse, to Nadine, in which she apologized profusely for getting involved with Ted topper. She had not known about their long-standing affair. He had been her teacher and he had seemed very sincere. She had never been involved with a man before, and she had no idea that this meant nothing to him. When she had gotten pregnant, she had naively expected him to marry her. He had explained then that he was involved with Nadine. She was dreadfully sorry. She had not known. She was having an abortion that weekend and would never see him again, but she wanted Nadine to understand she had not intentionally tried to take away anyone's boyfriend. She felt very guilty about everything and she felt as if her life was over, but she was sure Nadine would understand, as one woman to another, that she had been misled and was more sinned against than sinning."

Mary Burke, the homeless cleaning woman who "passes" for a "housed" woman, finds out things about Leila from cleaning her house. She doesn't understand how Leila can put up with her husband's infidelity.
"Mary had far more pride than mrs. Landsman, because she wouldn't take his crap, which was not a nice expression, but accurate. She had been a good wife and a good mother, and she was entitled to a good husband. Sometimes she still went over and over it, trying to understand what she did wrong. Did she pick the wrong man? But they had seemed happy for 20 years. Should she have pretended she didn't know? Should she have said, whatever you want, dear, as mrs. Landsman did, and just hope he wouldn't bring home some disease or get his mistress pregnant?
What had Mary done wrong? As she cleaned other women's houses, she tried to figure out where she had gone astray and how her life had derailed, but she couldn't comprehend it. Watching her ladies' lives fall apart didn't teach her much. The only one of them playing around was mrs. Douglas, and her marriage didn't seem in danger. Every other woman, she thought, lived in ignorance or in fear."

Mary had become homeless little by little, after her husband divorced her. And her heartless kids don't give a s*** about her.
"Before she had been evicted, it had become evident she could afford nothing that existed, and the wait for public housing was forever and a day. Finally they had thrown her few things on the sidewalk in a pitiful pile she had had to walk away from, carrying her two suitcases and her raincoat and winter coat, her quilt. She was too stunned, too numb to cry. She kept looking back at her table, her chair, her bed, her pots and dishes. What would become of her?
There had always been neighborhoods of cheap rooming houses when she was growing up. When had they disappeared? Where did poor people live now? Everything she could find was beyond her income. She wrote to Cindy and she wrote to Jaime. Cindy sent her a letter full of advice on budgeting her income, a check for $200 and a long complaint about the cost of raising children in the Washington area. Two of her kids were in private schools. She simply did not have any discretionary income. What had happened to the settlement Daddy had given her?"

Leila's husband Nick leaves her and gets an apartment in Boston with his actress pregnant girlfriend. Leila and Nick's son David insists that they all get together for a dinner. While Leila is nauseated with the idea, she does it for David's sake.
" 'you're unusually silent,' Nick said suddenly. 'are we boring you? Perhaps you were hoping for an evening alone with your new friend?'
She was so startled that she dropped some Szechuan beef into her lap, staining the new silk dress.
'I'm a little tired,' she said more softly than she had intended. 'finals, my book, the one in production, all that.'
Zak took over the conversation with a rap about how he never had fun when he tried to eat out on the cape, because people would buttonhole him about their pets' symptoms and foibles. She tried to figure out what had upset her. The implied accusation? How dare you be having an affair. No, it was that hard poking voice. In the days when she had sometimes planned to go with Nick for a week or a weekend, when David was a baby and could be packed up and taken, she had realized finally that, before he left, he always managed to quarrel with her and storm out, so that she did not end up accompanying him."
Which reminded me of my machista ex-husband. When we were married and my girls were babies, my ex-husband would pick a fight with me on every occasion, ie Christmas, birthdays, vacations. So he would ruin it and it would not be a happy occasion, instead tears and heartbreak would abound.

I hated some of the characters in this book so much. The most useful part in this book, was letting readers know something of what it's like to be homeless. The author had a fairly good concept of what it actually is like.
I have been homeless before, but I was young then, 30 years difference from the 61 year old Mary Burke. Which makes it a lot easier, because people like you if you are a pretty young woman. I also had a car, that I slept in, and I also had a storage unit that I could rotate clothes in and out of. Still, it's no fun to be homeless, because it's hard to find a safe place to park your car. It's hard to sleep, knowing that someone can just come up and look in your window, and see you sleeping in your car. show less

Several intertwining stories about women in various difficult positions. One character is loosely based on Pamela Smart, the woman who was convicted of coercing a high-school boy to kill her husband. The character here is somewhat more sympathetic than in the the movie To Die For. Lots of good insight into the perils of being a woman, including an eye-opening description of a homeless woman's survival techniques.

Går ind under huden på kvinder og på det amerikanske samfund