Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #521968 in Books
• Published on: 1990-01-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
King's adder's-tongue persona, that racy Southern lady who speared the regional WASPs and the good old drones in Wasp and Southern Ladies and Gentlemen, now takes on the anti-male adipose tissue of the women's lib movement - with a few sneak attacks and lots of jolly farce. "Call me Isabel," begins the narrator, a product of Queen Caroline Court House, Virginia. (Isabel's only living relative is Aunt Edna, secretary to Father Chillingsworth, rector of St. Jude the Impossible, who once confused Edna's calendar of female "troubles" with the Moveable Feasts.) But it's in Boston, after a Weatherman explosion which demolishes the bombers and the wall of Isabel's apartment, that she is forced to meet Polly Bradshaw, the TV-interviewer of such groups as the "Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell." So writer Isabel, weary of Regencies, now decides to cash in on the Movement's book-sales bonanza, teaming up with Polly - who, as heiress to the Old Yankee loony left, is out to force everyone to love everyone else. Furthermore, Polly and Isabel also acquire (by prying her from a cement mixer on a beach) medievalist Gloria; she dresses in draperies, money belt and gentian violet; she carries a lute and a drug habit; she often speaks in Middle English . . . and has composed a madrigal about her favorite topic - the colorful murder of Edward II. Thus, after a fraught journey to California (Polly's unbearable thrift relieved by Gloria's key to ladies' rooms machines), the "Don't Tread on Me Commune" is underway, with the addition of: Agnes, whose survivalist husband Boomer thought to keep her in the bomb shelter by beating her with his diving rod; Martha Bailey ("a down home Baptist with a blond Jesus on her calendars and relatives in Folsom Prison"); plus - surprise! - Aunt Edna, gloriously and happily pregnant by handsome Father Chillingsworth. And before it all ends with an assault by Boomer and screaming mayhem (Gloria, with her curling iron, tries to reconstruct the murder of Edward Il), there's Isabel's stint for a porn-book house, a disaster with spreading scrapple, a fine pig named Farnsworth, a birth, a baptism - and exeunt all to Virginia. Snide, snide . . . but funny, funny: an irreverent counterpoint to such soulful Movement fictions as Alix Kates Shulman's Burning Questions. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Sisterhood is Hilarious
When Sisterhood Was in Flower may be out of print as a single title, but it is available, in its entirety, in The Florence King Reader (which also contains excerpts from King's other books, book reviews, and uncollected essays), so mouse on over and order it. Sisterhood begins with the line "Call me Isabel.", which says a lot right there. Isabel, who has escaped from Virginia to Boston in 1971, falls in with a pair of most unlikely roommates, a cat named Quadrupet (and a pig named Farnsworth), the Don't Tread on Me feminist commune, the Sword and Scabbard porn-publishing company (don't miss their twelve author's guidelines, most of which can't be repeated in a public place), an inflatable doll, an enormous cauldron of scrapple, a raving survivalist, an Episcopalian priest -- but I don't want to give away all Isabel's secrets. I laughed out loud at Isabel's driving test, the court record involving the inflatable doll, the scarpple chase, and more scenes than I can count. Funniest thing I've read in years.

Hilarious satire on feminism
This blissfully funny novel tells the story of Isabel, an introverted writer who finds herself to her horror having to share an apartment with Polly, a humourless radical feminist who drives her crazy. Then they encounter Gloria, a medievalist with an obsession about the gruesome death of Edward the Second. Polly inherits a house in California, and they set off to travel there, on the way they gather up Agnes, an abused housewife running away from her husband, and Martha, an elderly divorcee. The book is full of wonderfully funny incidents and marvellous characters. Gloria the crazed medievalist is particularly hilarious. The part where Isabel takes a job as a writer of porno novels is hysterically funny. I wish Florence King would write a sequel, I'd love to read more about this craz bunch of characters.

The Funniest Ever
I first read this about 14 years ago and it is simply the funniest thing I have ever read in my life...ever. And I have read a LOT of funny things. Even after all these years, when I re-read the parts about the Birthing Bucket and Poore Ned's Burning you-know-what, I become weak with laughter. I remember reading this aloud to my husband and being unable to continue because I was so convulsed. This is included in The Florence King Reader and is well worth any price.