[For] all its length and its large cast of characters [Vida] tells us little that we don't already know about radical politics in America. The novel is named for its central character, Davida Asch, a radical political activist who has gone underground with the comrades of her sect and travels back and forth across the country, a fugitive. (p. 38)

It ought to have made an exciting book.

Instead, Piercy, who dedicates her work to "the street and alley soldiers," has written an excessively long, rambling, often tedious book, which depends on her sweeping, uncritical acceptance of the Network's version of radical politics….

Vida's work and that of her comrades in the Network, as reflected in the novel, is pathetically simple. In the 1970s, when the present novel takes place, only survival counts, both for each comrade alone and for the sect. Back in the more distant past of...