Book Review: Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

I really liked this book! This is a good book to read during this Pride month. To set the stage, as Wikipedia said, "in the 1970s, an impoverished but intelligent thirty-seven-year-old Mexican-American woman Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, a resident of Spanish Harlem, is unfairly incarcerated in a New York mental hospital due to her supposed violent criminal tendencies."

The book was written during the 1970s and it reflects the social revolution just beginning then and that continues today. It plays with the concepts of what is considered normal and healthy. This is a topic that really interests me. Culture has fluidity on this topic. Just over 150 years ago many people slavery to be normal and healthy. Within my lifetime folks with different sexual orientations were considered to be sexually inverted and needing treatment, sometimes with shock therapy.

Much of the book takes place in the future. The author writes about topics that a narrative did not even exist for at the time of the book's writing. The author explores a future where race, gender, sexual and relationship roles and orientations are seen quite differently and where what is considered normal and healthy is quite different than it is now. The book explores polyamory 20 years before the word existed.

This book is considered a sci-fi, speculative fiction and feminist classic for good reason. Highly recommended!