Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1150915 in Books
• Published on: 1993-04-17
• Released on: 1993-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 324 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Sarton's 19th novel echoes many earlier themes: the comfort of friendship; relationships between women; the precarious balance between union and solitude, the bond between people and their pets, and what it means to live an elegant life and achieve an elegant death. After the death of her companion of 30 years, 60-year-old Harriet Hatfield opens a bookstore for women in a changing, predominantly blue-collar neighborhood near Boston. Following a newspaper article in which she is labeled a lesbian, a word that very ladylike Harriet has never thought to use, she becomes the target of threats and abuse from an unknown assailant. As Harriet moves from the well-ordered life of a sheltered companion into the rougher, wider world, she begins to redefine herself. Sarton uses the bookstore as a backdrop against which to paint a series of predictable thumbnail sketches of women, but these portraits are pale and thin. Although there is a clarity to her unadorned prose, the richness of varied voices does not come through and emotions are many times too carefully circumscribed. Sarton's mainstream, "proper" heroine counterbalances gay stereotypes, but the focus on issue rather than character diminishes the novel's impact.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Sarton's fans will welcome her 19th novel and another of her dignified older women who prevail. Released from a confining lesbian relationship by the death of her lover, Harriet at 60 fulfills her dream of opening a bookstore for women in a Boston working-class neighborhood. Vandalism and threats lead to a news article that forces Harriet to re-evaluate her life and face its impact on others. Though Sarton's style is flabbier than usual and her writing loses credibility when she attempts to deal with all aspects of homosexuality, homophobia, and women's issues, this is still a gentle and readable novel. Given Sarton's popularity, public libraries will want it.
- Elizabeth Guiney Sandvick, North Hennepin Community Coll., Minneapolis
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Book about trying to be seen as a person, not a label
This is a rather tame book that challenges society's single minded focus on pigeon-holing gays and lesbians. Harriet Hatfield is a sixty-ish woman whose life changes after her female lover of 30 years dies and she decides to use her inheritance to open a woman's bookstore. In so doing she meets people and encounters experiences her sheltered past did not prepare her for, both friends and foes. However she forges on, and ultimately seems to enjoy her newfound open-ness without ever fully reconciling herself to the term "lesbian." The book provides a unique look through the eyes of an older woman who is set apart from the younger gay culture mostly by the generation gap. She is a woman who tries to overcome her own prejudices and discomfort as well as deal with being an object of prejudice herself. Because the character tries to downplay her own sexual orientation and focus being a woman in general, and to sell books that appeal to women of all types this book may be more widely read than just in the lesbian community.

inspirational
This book may not be a portrait of extreme left wing revolutionaries, but it is about real people, fighting the real struggle of day to day life in world which chooses not to understand. Sarton's characters are magnificent. Harriet's determination to succeed and survive is truly an inspiration.

Disappointing
I can't say this book isn't well-written, it is. But it seems rather self-consciously "uplifting". The characters in it are all a bit too noble; dialogue is awkwardly formal, even for well-to-do, highly educated people. Friendships with oh-so-wonderful people are formed so easily and quickly. Many, many people like these do exist -- I know many of them; but the writer seemed to make the situation rather than let it happen -- a bit of a fairy tale, in spite of the realities of hatred that it discusses. I couldn't place the period when this takes place; Mary Daly's book, central to the story, was published in 1998, but the copyright on this novel is 1989.