Marge Piercy's assumption about our modern confusions of identity seems to be that we hide in ill-fitting categories because they protect us from pain…. Piercy's singular achievement [in The High Cost of Living] is to make [a] prettily vulgar working-class girl [Honor] in Detroit attractive enough so that the other two [characters] are drawn to her…. Currently in a "French phase," [Honor] insists on such pronunciations as "Bernar," "Honorée" and Frenchifying sordid into "sor'id." It all fits perfectly in the sor'id setting of Detroit's forgotten French names like Gratiot, Livernois, and the like….

But Piercy's deeper concern lies with the cautiously-developed intimacy of Leslie and Bernard, which sends them each back into the past, questioning the anxieties and defenses of their sexual natures…. [The] mutual disappointments of Leslie and Bernard emerge almost palpably real. (p. 349)

Yet the novel isn't a test-tube for three characters who...