On the whole, what is supposed to pass for honesty in [Vida], in both sexual and political matters, turns out, on closer inspection, to be a routine application of "liberated" attitudes to her characters and situation. The passages that ring true do so because of obsessively observed details….

From a writer who has published six volumes of verse, one might expect a closer attention to language. Piercy tortures adjectives out of nouns, as in "his misfortunate mother," and turns nouns into verbs. She is also guilty of unwittingly grotesque oxymorons…. (p. 18)

The sloppiness of its style betrays the book's underlying sloppiness of thought…. Piercy's book fails to scrutinize either ends or means. Moreover, it totally lacks a sense of history. Without this, without a sense of the limitations of human endeavor, there is no nobility in suffering or sacrifice. That is why the cheering sounds that ring through...