Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [0]
WOMAN ON THE
EDGE OF TIME
“The novel is a brilliant and shocking indictment of a society in which the powerless are manipulated by those in power.”
Library Journal
“Persuasive and involving … Piercy has created this ideal society with such passion, eloquence, and energy that the reader not only believes in it but feels a kind of reverse nostalgia for it … even the cynical reader will leave it refreshed and rallied.”
The Kirkus Reviews
“Connie Ramos’s world is cuttingly real.”
Newsweek
“Piercy gets better and better … a new level of sophistication, drama, and power.”
Hartford Courant
“With each novel, Piercy demonstrates increasing mastery of the form. In this one, she weaves her heroine’s past, present, and futuristic fantasies into a profoundly affecting work.”
Booklist
By Marge Piercy:
Fiction
GOING DOWN FAST
DANCE THE EAGLE TO SLEEP
SMALL CHANGES
WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME
THE HIGH COST OF LIVING
VIDA
BRAIDED LIVES
FLY AWAY HOME
GONE TO SOLDIERS
SUMMER PEOPLE
HE, SHE AND IT
THE LONGINGS OF WOMEN
CITY OF DARKNESS, CITY OF LIGHT
STORM TIDE
THREE WOMEN
THE THIRD CHILD
SEX WARS
Poetry
BREAKING CAMP
HARD LOVING
4-TELLING (with Emma Jarrett, Dick Lourie, and Bob Hershon)
TO BE OF USE
LIVING IN THE OPEN
THE TWELVE-SPOKED WHEEL FLASHING
THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE
CIRCLES ON THE WATER: SELECTED POEMS
STONE, PAPER, KNIFE
MY MOTHER’S BODY
AVAILABLE LIGHT
MARS AND HER CHILDREN
WHAT ARE BIG GIRLS MADE OF
EARLY GRRRL
COLORS PASSING THROUGH US
Other
THE LAST WHITE CLASS: A PLAY (with Ira Wood)
PARTI-COLORED BLOCKS FOR A QUILT: ESSAYS
EARLY RIPENING: AMERICAN WOMEN’S POETRY NOW
THE EARTH SHINES SECRETLY: A BOOK OF DAYS
(with paintings by Nell Blaine)
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This is a book that took a lot of help to write, although nobody who helped me should bear the burden for what I made. I owe a great debt of thanks to Michael Galen and everybody else at RT: A Journal of Radical Therapy; to Nancy Henley; Phyllis Chester; Michael Brown; to Mary Waters and others of the Mental Patients Liberation Front; to Dr. Paul Lowinger, especially strong thanks; to Jon Levine; to Mary Lou Shields; to Rosario Morales; to Frank Mirer of Harvard and Bernie Bulkin of Hunter, who helped me with the poisoning; all the people at HEALTHPAC and the Somerville Women’s Health Project who fed me information and helped me with contacts.
Above all I am grateful to people I cannot thank by name, who risked their jobs to sneak me into places I wanted to enter; and grateful to the past and present inmates of mental institutions who shared their experiences with me, outside and inside. Thanks to the students at Old Rochester Regional High School, amused but supportive of my interest in Mattapoisett. Finally I’m in debt to the folks from Mouth-of-Mattapoisett who worked so hard to make me understand—who found me dense and slow of wit, but always told me that at least I try.
M.P.
ONE
Connie got up from her kitchen table and walked slowly to the door. Either I saw him or I didn’t and I’m crazy for real this time, she thought.
“It’s me—Dolly!” Her niece was screaming in the hall. “Let me in! Hurry!”
“Momentito.” Connie fumbled with the bolt, the police lock, finally swinging the door wide. Dolly fell in past her, her face bloody. Connie clutched at Dolly, trying to see how badly she was hurt. “Qué pasa? Who did this?”
Blood was oozing from Dolly’s bruised mouth and she grasped a wad of matted paper handkerchiefs brown with old blood and spotted bright red with fresh. Her left eye was swollen shut. “Geraldo beat me.” Dolly let her peel off the blue winter coat trimmed with fur and press her broad hips in pink pants back into the kitchen chair. There Dolly collapsed and began to weep.