Almost alone among her American contemporaries, Marge Piercy is radical and writer simultaneously, her literary identity so indivisible that it is difficult to say where one leaves off and the other begins…. [She] has used her prose, particularly, to chronicle the lives of those society considers marginal—the young, the mad, the different—or those caught up in the forefront of movements for social change…. "Vida," which follows the life of a young woman radical from her emergence in the antiwar movement of the 1960's through her life in the underground network of the 1970's, evokes life in the radical movement so realistically that it seems at times more literal than imagined. Yet it is also a fully controlled, tightly structured dramatic narrative of such artful intensity that it leads the reader on at almost every page. As is often the case with radical fiction, it is the content rather than the formal characteristics that hold the mind, for it is not "simply" a novel but a political brief. I have my differences with "Vida," but I think they are substantive rather than literary. It is an interesting—and challenging—book. (p. 1)
What is most remarkable about Miss Piercy's representations of each of [the periods of Vida's life] is the density and complexity with which they are drawn. Events change, organizations change, beliefs change, relationships change, all with a microscopic fidelity to actuality that is almost astounding. How, precisely, was this year different from that year?… Miss Piercy recalls it all. Demonstrations, political meetings, conversations in movement settings ranging from an apartment in Brooklyn to a hideout in Vermont—these, too, she reproduces with a passion to get it all straight that is the mark of a true calling. With such a mass of characters pulling and hauling in so many directions, it is a wonder that none of them gets away from her, but they do not. Vida, in particular, is completely credible throughout….
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