[Woman on the Edge of Time] is a telling sermon-novel, or rather two novels capably welded into one. [Piercy] takes the worst imaginable human situation, a woman committed to a mental hospital, bombarded by drugs and abused by experimental surgery, and sets it against the good life—options of the future into which the victim periodically escapes on a time-trip, as if on weekend leave from the battle of life. Battle?—it's a war. And I'm afraid it's the present hell on earth that brings out the best in Piercy, the purity of her range.

Norman Shrapnel, "Survival Path: 'Woman on the Edge of Time'," in The Guardian (© Guardian and Manchester Evening News Ltd, 1979), Vol. 120, No. 22, May 27, 1979, p. 23.

Although she is undoubtedly courageous, it is because of her faults—including a maddening self-righteousness—that Vida [title character of Vida] is a compelling character, one whose personal problems are...