The Commune

By Erica Abeel

"How could you not love Erica Abeel's "The Commune," when it contains within its delicious description of the summer of 1970 and the beginnings of feminism, this chewy gem about a woman who is "...an invitation to ruin...the old ivory of her skin, a medallion of fat beneath the shoulder strap of her bra, delectable, all of it." Cutting, knowing, hilarious..."The Commune" is delectable, all of it." -- Lucian Truscott, journalist and author of "Dress Gray"

A Joyous, literary romp with hidden depth. - Kirkus

Erica Abeel is a wickedly funny writer - Joyce Wadler, journalist, former reporter for NY Times

Erica Abeel's sharp, witty, delightfully twisty novel THE COMMUNE goes behind the scenes of the women's movement circa 1970... I wanted the book not to end." Dawn Raffel, "The Strange Case of Dr. Couney."

"The Commune" Erica Abeel's sparkling, inventive take on the beginnings of the Women's Movement, is astute and hilarious at once." Hilma Wolitzer, "Today A Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket: Stories

"Erica Abeel is at her scathingly funny best in this deeply thought-provoking gem. You'll never look at the Hamptons quite the same way again." - Erica Heller, memoirist

"THE COMMUNE is a really funny satire on the liberal elite. You certainly put them in their place!" - Dr. Nijole Kudirka, psychotherapist and photographer

Abeel pulls off the tricky feat of mixing biting satire with characters we really care about. Along the way she skewers the Hamptons as only an insider could." -- Steven Gaines, "Simply Halston, Philistines at the Hedgerow."

Abeel captures the comic ironies of women who created a social revolution yet remain hostage to a more traditional past. I love this witty, rambunctious novel. What a ride!" -- Thelma Adams, author of the novel "The Last Woman Standing" and film critic.

...Part of the fun is figuring out which brilliantly drawn character is which real-life person, making this buoyant, moving piece-of-history novel an absolute knockout. Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of "Pictures of You, Is This Tomorrow" and "With or Without You."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adelaide Books Publishers
• Release date: Dec 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781956635515

Erica Abeel

ERICA ABEEL is the author of five books, including the acclaimed novels Wild Girls (a Notable Book in Oprah Magazine) and Women Like Us, and the [auto-fiction] memoir Only When I Laugh. She writes about women caught on the cusp between convention and change. A former dancer, Abeel is Professor Emeritus of French literature at City University of New York. When not writing fiction, she covers film for online entertainment sites. Abeel treasures time spent with her family. An avid swimmer, she lives in both East Hampton and Manhattan.

Book preview

Erica_Abeel_-_The_Commune.jpg

How could you not love Erica Abeel's The Commune, when it contains within its delicious description of the summer of 1970 and the beginnings of feminism, this chewy gem about a woman who is ...an invitation to ruin...the old ivory of her skin, a medallion of fat beneath the shoulder strap of her bra, delectable, all of it. Cutting, knowing, hilarious...The Commune is delectable, all of it.

—Lucian Truscott,

journalist and author of Dress Gray

A Joyous, literary romp with hidden depth.

—Kirkus

Erica Abeel is a wickedly funny writer

—Joyce Wadler,

journalist, former reporter for NY Times

Erica Abeel’s sharp, witty, delightfully twisty novel THE COMMUNE goes behind the scenes of the women’s movement circa 1970… I wanted the book not to end."

—Dawn Raffel,

The Strange Case of Dr. Couney.

The Commune Erica Abeel’s sparkling, inventive take on the beginnings of the Women’s Movement, is astute and hilarious at once."

—Hilma Wolitzer,

"Today A Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket: Stories

Erica Abeel is at her scathingly funny best in this deeply thought-provoking gem. You’ll never look at the Hamptons quite the same way again.

—Erica Heller, memoirist

THE COMMUNE is a really funny satire on the liberal elite. You certainly put them in their place!

—Dr. Nijole Kudirka,

psychotherapist and photographer

Abeel pulls off the tricky feat of mixing biting satire with characters we really care about. Along the way she skewers the Hamptons as only an insider could."

—Steven Gaines,

Simply Halston, Philistines at the Hedgerow.

Abeel captures the comic ironies of women who created a social revolution yet remain hostage to a more traditional past. I love this witty, rambunctious novel. What a ride!"

—Thelma Adams,

author of the novel The Last Woman Standing and film critic.

…Part of the fun is figuring out which brilliantly drawn character is which real-life person, making this buoyant, moving piece-of-history novel an absolute knockout.

—Caroline Leavitt,

New York Times bestselling author of "Pictures of You,

Is This Tomorrow and With or Without You."

"… Novelist, former dancer, scholar, and critic Erica Abeel’s forthcoming novel The Commune, fictionalizes the internal conflict of 1970 feminists between life with and without dependence on men.

—Sheila Weller

in The Saturday Evening Post,

author of NYT bestseller Girls Like Us.

~

The Commune

A novel

by

Erica Abeel

The Commune

A novel

By Erica Abeel

Copyright © by Erica Abeel

Cover design © 2021 Adelaide Books

Published by Adelaide Books, New York / Lisbon

adelaidebooks.org

Editor-in-Chief

Stevan V. Nikolic

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For any information, please address Adelaide Books

at [e-mail]

or write to:

Adelaide Books

244 Fifth Ave. Suite D27

New York, NY, 10001

ISBN-13: 978-1-956635-51-5

~

to Jasper and Otis who bring joy

Contents

Prologue

FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

CHAPTER 1

The Drive Out

CHAPTER 2

Dinner at the Commune

CHAPTER 3

The Marriage Plot

CHAPTER 4

Morning After

CHAPTER 5

Edwina and Nadine

CHAPTER 6

Edwina and the Children

CHAPTER 7

The Party at Dragon’s Gate

CHAPTER 8

The Party at Dragon’s Gate Gilda

CHAPTER 9

Party at Dragon’s Gate Nadine

CHAPTER 10

The Party at Dragon’s Gate:

Leora and Kaz

CHAPTER 11

The Media Elite

CHAPTER 12

Charades

CHAPTER 13

Desire

CHAPTER 14

Combustions

CHAPTER 15

Fred Does Suicide

CHAPTER 16

Mayhem

CHAPTER 17

Reverberations

CHAPTER 18

Crisis

CHAPTER 19

Beverly Baboon

CHAPTER 20

Pox

CHAPTER 21

The Marriage Plot Reconsidered

Acknowledgements

Blurbs of previous works

About the Author

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"Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want."

— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage."

— Sheila Cronin

"I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig."

— Andrea Dworkin

"Most women are one man away from welfare."

— Gloria Steinem

Prologue

August 26, 1970

"This is not a bedroom war, this is a political movement.

Man is not the enemy, man is a fellow victim."

– Betty Friedan

They begin to arrive, with their signs, their excitement, their smiles. Women in big Jackie O sunglasses and dirndl skirts; students in leotards and bell bottoms, a few with Afros; the East Side matron in a Pucci toting a gold shopping bag. A lone man in a bow tie glances around, moistly eager for praise at having shown up. They all eye each other shyly. Two young women, breasts free in their tee shirts, hoist a hand-painted placard stretched between two poles: WOMEN STRIKE FOR PEACE AND EQUALITY! Behind it appears another: FREE ABORTION ON DEMAND.

Leora pivots and rises on her toes to look up Fifth Avenue: too much air between the smattering of marchers gathered uncertainly among the awnings and polished brass. Far from the critical mass they need. The numbers are crucial – to prove the fact of our revolution, Gilda has said. They’ve carpet-bombed the town with leaflets to get the troops out: "You do not have to be a militant feminist or a man-hater or a bra-burner. IF YOU DO NOTHING YOU ARE SAYING YOU ARE SATISFIED WITH YOUR INFERIOR STATUS."

Were the naysayers right? Leora pictures that movie where Charlie Chaplin marches down the street waving a flag with no one marching after him ... One boozy night at the commune, Gilda Gladstone confided to her, Leora – maybe since she was the only human stirring in the house at 3 A.M. – that when she first proposed a national strike to mark the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage, she got shouted down. The movement too small to get the numbers, barely qualified yet as a movement, four months not enough time to organize and anyway no fucking money ...

Hang on, it’s early yet, Leora tells herself. Doesn’t she have a history of arriving early for the party? Story of her life ...

Late afternoon, she’d taken Finn on the number 6 train to Columbus Circle (little sister left behind, indignant, with the sitter). They headed down 59th Street past the stink of the carriage horses and dank breath of a subway entrance toward the assembly point on Fifth. The Strike has been called for 5:30: less provocative then for women to walk off the job, and they’ll catch the home bound crowds of rush hour. A storm has chased the soul-sapping heat of late August and brought a promise of new beginnings. Fleecy little clouds sail overhead.

Finn, never idle, reads aloud from the marchers’ signs: END HUMAN SACRIFICE, DON’T GET MARRIED. Is that like the Aztecs? Finn says. Dear God, where’d he learn that? As for the larger analogy, she can think of four explanations, none ideal for a six-year-old. Sweetheart, I’ll explain later, Leora says.

There’s Gilda Gladstone, the parade’s Grand Marshal, on the south side of 59th beside the Plaza Hotel. Flanked by Nadine and her other lieutenants, pressing toward the assembly point. Gilda looking, as always, as though she can’t keep pace with herself. "The feminist crusader was having her hair done at Sassoon and was almost late, a catty male reporter will write. A cross between Hermione Gingold and Bette Davis ... "

During the hours of mimeographing, leafleting, phoning, Gilda hasn’t had time to let herself think. Suppose just a few hundred women turn out? What an embarrassment! Women simply have to show up, every media outlet will see this parade as the test of feminism’s credibility and scope. The fact of their revolution.

Leora cranes around. No sign yet of Monica Fairley, the rising star whose star has risen from nowhere, in Gilda’s telling, siphoning attention from her, the founder, and ripping off the movement for her own ambition; the mere mention of Monica can trigger Gilda’s asthma. Mid-battle over who would liaise with press, lead the march, deliver the closing speech, etc., Monica offered to step aside – she couldn’t abide strife among feminist sisters (horizontal conflict); she’d address a rally for Cesar Chavez and the grape-pickers instead. Into the breach leaped Nadine to broker a truce. Gilda will lead the goddamn march, Monica will emcee the rally on 42nd Street at Bryant Park ... Leora sometimes wonders how a revolution – what Gilda calls a quantum leap in consciousness – can so resemble kindergarten.

At minutes past five it’s as if floodgates open. They come streaming down 59th Street, women of all ages and persuasions, office workers, nurses ... Women in tie-dye schmattes ... Iron-haired veterans of anti-war protests, militant and wide in the beam ... Students with Susan B. Anthony buttons ... Mothers with babies slung across their chests ... Solemn, lank-haired girls – "the daughters," Gilda calls then ... A few guys with kids riding on their shoulders ... For a stupid moment Leora thinks, where are they all going? The crowd in the square in front of the Plaza slews down side streets, placards riding high. OPORTUNIDADES IGUALES ... DON’T COOK DINNER, STARVE A RAT TODAY ... With any luck, Finn won’t spot END PENILE SERVITUDE ...

The horns of snarled traffic stutter their rage.

They’ve liberated the Statue of Liberty! Word spreads that a posse has scrabbled up to banner the good lady with Women of the World Unite!

Leora jumps for another check of Fifth. This time round a sea of marchers floods the avenue, color red popping, white signs shifting like sails. My God, the numbers! Beyond our wildest dreams, Gilda will write. Apricot beams of sunlight angle low between the buildings and glance off the windshields of bleating cars and taxis trapped in the crush. Across the street, the truck for CBS. Farther uptown, NBC. Today marks the beginning of the most important social movement of the 70’s, Gilda will say at the rally in Bryant Park. How did I have the nerve? Gilda will write.

A pair of mounted policemen, boots shinola’d, clop along nearby, the muscled flanks of their horses sleek with sweat. Leora remembers they never got the permit to march down Fifth. What, block a major thoroughfare during rush hour? the mayor’s people said. Weeks of lobbying and ass-kissing, and they’ve gotten one lousy lane. I don’t believe the mayor will persist in this insult to women, Gilda has stoutly told a reporter from The Daily Beaver. After all, Irish, Italians, other ethnic minorities are allowed to parade up Fifth Avenue every month, every year. For women, not once in fifty years?

An urgency roils the crowd. As if prompted by a central brain, it powers on, heaves slowly forward amidst chants and raised fists. Leora, Finn, and other marchers feed in from 59th. They feel invincible, a great peacetime army. WE DEMAND EQUALITY ... FROM ADAM’S RIB TO WOMEN’S LIB ... A chant goes up: JOIN US NOW, SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL!

Whistles and catcalls from men on the sidewalk. A beefy guy yells If you won’t wear bras, I will. He looks about to cry. A cop places a hand on his shoulder and gently eases him from view. Marchers smile broadly and chant. DON’T IRON WHILE THE STRIKE IS HOT. They jump to look back, marvel at how the marchers keep coming – "A band of braless bubbleheads," a broadcaster will say.

The crowd is bursting beyond the single lane granted by the mayor, linking arms and taking over Fifth, toppling barriers. Mounted police hang, stymied, on the outskirts. Leora sees a squadron of cops form a menacing line and adjust their gear. Somewhere marchers are getting corralled together against sawhorses ... An eddy of disquiet … Word goes round that a woman was knocked down by a cop on horseback ... A towering horse moves in too close, Leora yanks Finn out of the way. The horse rears and whinnies – a soprano blast and several low after-snorts. Leora sees the flared nostrils and swatch of pale pink gum, the white of its panicked eyes. More cops close in, billy clubs dangling from belts. Will they use tear gas? Ride the women down like Cossacks? Any moment this could slide into mayhem ...

FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

CHAPTER 1

The Drive Out

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony."

– Jane Austen,

letter to Fanny Knight, March 13, 1817

That summer of 1970 when the women’s movement went mainstream and put the world on notice that nothing would ever be the same again was the summer, too, she was introduced to the commune. Her life had stalled on several fronts. Why don’t you come out to the commune for the weekend? Fred Lustman said. The storied place loomed in her imaginings as an exclusive club of achievers on the far end of Long Island who would hardly be clamoring for her presence. Driving out there one evening in May, she could not have guessed that she was barreling toward one of those fateful stretches that shape a person’s life; that in the shadow of History getting made her own little story would corkscrew in directions that even she, with her hopped-up imagination, could not have foreseen. Nor would she have guessed that like a secret agent from no known country she’d violate the commune’s law against writing about their elective family. Though of course her account of that momentous summer would only be fiction ...

Fred drove – a safe ten miles over the limit. Beside him sat Edwina Scahill, WASP royalty, wisps of dark hair from her careless chignon kissing her suede jacket – ravishing. Leora tried not to gawk. They were headed for Islesfordd, the fabled town on Long Island’s gilded coast, and home to the commune. Islesfordd was generally impressed only by Gatsby-esque displays of wealth – yet the commune had acquired a notoriety based on, well ... intellectual capital. To Leora the very notion of a weekend there felt ripe with possibilities to fall on her face. To quell the nerves she took deep breaths and did her postpartum Kegel exercises. This only served to pitch her above her normal resting state of unbridled randiness ...

Ridiculous name, commune, with its overtones of socialism and kibbutz. Fred, no stranger to preciosity, had hatched it with his cohort, Gilda Gladstone, who’d kind of invented feminism – well, the second wave. The name was fancy for what was simply a low life grouper house, a rental with far too many shares that the Town Planning Board would have banned, but for members from Olde Islesfordd who lacked the mental resources to agree on a dog warden. Most maddening, no one on the Board had any notion what a commune might be – a band of hippies? Beatniks? Communists?

It’s sort of a half-way house for the divorced who miss the intimacy of marriage but aren’t ready to jump back into a new one out of loneliness, Fred had offered back in the city. Or maybe a summer camp for grown up delinquents.

While he and Edwina chatted up front, ignoring her, Leora amused herself by picturing Gilda Gladstone as Liberty Leading the People on the barricades, as in the painting by Delacroix. Except Gilda would be more a balabusta leading a zap action against the Miss America pageant, schnoz first. Gilda was planning, Fred had told her, the biggest zap action of them all – some sort of nation-wide strike and parade of women down Fifth Avenue right before Labor Day ...

Fred was chain-smoking over a cough. The fug of smoke mingled with the musk oil Leora had daubed at her décolletage (you never knew). She rolled down the window and peered out at the big sky over Long Island’s flats. A chilly blast – spring arrived grudgingly out here – but she couldn’t grouse about air quality on evening one. Since her husband had split, she’d slid into excuse-me-for-existing mode. She reminded herself of a dog that complies with a jerk to its leash before it’s finished business. Or the sad old guy with ashen skin she’d seen waiting for the M3 bus on Fifth and 45th. He’d gently swooned to the curb, looking surprised and a bit embarrassed that, maybe dying, he should cause a fuss.

Up front they were yakking about a communard. Pretty exalted term for a lowly grouper. But some group! Leora tried to remember the cast of characters Fred had rattled off in the city. The queenpin, of course, was Gilda Gladstone. She’d be hanging out with an icon, a woman who was shaping the course of history! Fred Lustman, no slouch, had written an almost-best seller about the shock of accelerating change. Gilda’s court seemed weighted toward scribblers, the cutesy term for writers. Who else might be there? Likely Gilda’s sidekick, a hotshot sociologist named Nadine Kusnetz. Gilda needs Nadine, Fred had said. "She’s not the most tactful person and Nadine ‘translates’ her to the world,’" he’d added, pleased with his phrase.

Leora more particularly hoped to see a horsey fellow with burnt-blond hair she’d spotted at Fred’s parties – mixers for intellectuals – in the city. Peter something with unpronounced letters in his name which meant money. In his innocently gossipy way, Fred had let drop that Peter was about to publish a book – another scribbler – and rode to the hounds with a Hunt Club in Boston. Gilda must like to spice up the mix of pear-shaped academics with socialite fox hunters. Leora’s head thrummed with what lay ahead: women opinion makers who lectured with icy poise and punctuated points with the heel of their hands, shapers of history, Public Intellectuals (whatever that was), everyone someone.

Well, maybe not Fred’s wife. Meghan was sous-chef in an Irish pub and stuck working in the city tonight. She’d never finished high school and looked of an age to re-up as a sophomore. And maybe not so much Edwina here, though perhaps any actual accomplishment added on to such beauty would be overkill. Edwina took society portraits for the Islesfordd Herald, photos of attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places, as they’d said about Slim Arons, who photographed jet-setters and socialites. Edwina had once done a story in the Islesfordd Herald about White Tea garden parties, where the ladies all wear white and the hostess lectures about some shit in white tea that can help you live forever. It was mainly the rich who planned, like the Greenland shark, to live pretty much forever, Leora had observed. The rest of humanity, unable to afford such a project, had more modest expectations. Leora wondered how Edwina held her own among the commune’s intellectual heavyweights. Perhaps she got credit for being the girlfriend of JoBeth Mankiller, the feminist art historian. Or a free pass as the prettiest woman in Fred’s coterie.

Fred himself was actually on somewhat shaky ground in the someone department – one of the almost famous, he liked to joke, sourly. Overload, his break-out book, had appeared rather a while back in the land of what-have-you-achieved-lately. He had a lot riding on a new work about the future of sexual arrangements, which included not only group sex, but group marriage, triads and what have you that would consign the bogey-man of possessiveness to the dust bin. Possessiveness – unlike fear, anger, etc – was a bogus, made-up emotion that crippled the potential for a rich life. Meanwhile, Overload, he’d tell anyone within ear shot, was soon to become a movie by the director who’d made King Kong 2. A nitpicker might point out that the manuscript had merely been optioned; Fred’s CV had a way of getting inflated. No matter, congratulations on Fred’s latest success were in order. Men developed crushes on him. Women adored how he actually listened when they recounted their little troubles – and who wouldn’t love a man whose default position was to marry you?

Fred sometimes confided in his semi-stutter – with lash-batting modesty – that he was burdened with more t-t-testosterone than the average guy. (Through some mysterious alchemy he transmuted obnoxious into charming.) Leora feared that she, too, was burdened by too much of whatever the female equivalent of t-t-testosterone might be. Sex was her main skill set. She must be some sort of mutant, at least in the world’s eyes. It did make living feel like a luge plunging around turns in pursuit of the next rapture. Among men this was considered rakish and sexy. Women were simply sluts. That was fine by her. She’d thought of crocheting a sampler quoting Marvell’s poem to hang on the leprous walls of her bathroom:

The grave’s a fine and private place

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may ...

I wouldn’t let Gilda bother you, it’s nothing p-p-personal, Fred was saying in a bass deepened by all that testosterone; his stutter more Etonian than speech impediment. Gilda doesn’t exactly cotton to attractive women.

"Of course it’s not personal – to her I’m invisible, Edwina said. There’s no more dangerous place to stand than between Gilda Gladstone and any man with a pulse. All ‘Our Leader’ cares about is finding the next guy."

She couldn’t hang here like a carp. Leora leaned forward, thrusting her head between them. Well, isn’t that a bit ironic, coming from the mother of the women’s movement? Her voice raspy from disuse and second hand smoke.

Fred gave his faux laugh, a ha-ha designed to whisk-broom away a remark beneath consideration. I don’t think Gilda cares to be called ‘the mother’ of anything.

Edwina continued to ignore her. The day Gilda is cordial toward me I’ll know I’ve lost my looks!

Now now. Light this for me, would you? The commune is the family we all wished we’d had. A refuge from the cut-throat competition of New York. It’s a place where we all root for each other, Fred added, voice cracking. He always went misty-eyed over the solidarity offered by the commune.

Edwina seemed unimpressed. I think Gilda’s chilliness toward me is also about JoBeth, she persisted, mumbling over the weed she was lighting.

"I hate that ‘about’ stuff, it’s psychobabble." Fred had decreed himself guardian of English usage.

Well, that’s not my point, is it?

The point, it’s nothing personal. Gilda’s position on the lesbian thing is strictly political. Anyway, why would she be hostile? After all, you’ve put yourself out of competition.

Chr-rist, Fred.

Leora felt a surge of warmth for Fred and his kindergarten efforts to get all the communards to make nice. Then she remembered reading somewhere about Gilda and the lesbian thing. Gilda feared that an influx of lesbians – what she called the lavender menace – into the movement might drive away mainstream women and paint feminists as man-hating lesbians who wanted to destroy respectable notions of womanhood and the traditional American family. She’d even claimed the C.I.A. had sent dykes to infiltrate the women’s movement as part of a plot to discredit it. For all of Gilda’s revolutionary fervor, perhaps there was something in her of a Tupperware hostess. Leora’s palms felt clammy. The evening ahead suddenly loomed as a minefield.

The pair up front were now snickering about a sculpture some Islesfordd fat cat had stuck on his lawn. The wannabe Gatsby, they called him. Apparently the art work resembled a giant phallus and was visible all along the western end of Hooker Pond. There was talk of lawsuits: how could people have their grandkids visit? Leora hadn’t caught the actual name of the offending party. Up front they might as well have slid shut the partition in a cab. Me here, Leora Voss! she wanted to shout. Clearly, Fred, her sponsor to the commune, had his priorities, which at the moment did not include her. Leora focused on feeling grateful to be invited.

Have you heard the latest about Islesfordd’s most notorious shrink? Fred was saying. Guy who runs those nude encounter groups?

Edwina’s suede shoulders jerked, as if she’d been jabbed by a cattle prod.

He just managed to get himself disbarred, Fred went on. Or defrocked – or whatever happens when they take away a psychiatrist’s shingle. Guess it didn’t help that the man actually boasts in his new book about fucking his patients. He doesn’t watch out, he’s gonna end up bludgeoned in his own bed.

Edwina abruptly swung around to Leora, as if just discovering her presence in the back seat. So: what brings you out to Islesfordd? she said, fake hearty.

Leora was focused on how to package herself, but she would later remember, after mayhem descended on Islesfordd, how Edwina had freaked at mention of Ilesfordd’s most notorious shrink.

"Well, to be honest, I’ve scarcely been anywhere since my, uh, separation. I spend most weekends with the kids, window shopping at this new English design store, Conran’s."

"Window-shopping," Edwina said in her throaty voice.

Leora had a sudden image of Edwina trailing her fingers in the water of an ornate fountain in some villa in Umbria.

Or we rent a rowboat in Central Park. Skip the detail that Cara was successfully resisting toilet training. That her last date from Parents without Partners kept a snarling, killer-grade Rottweiler in a cage in his

Reviews for The Commune

[anaraguard · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I very rarely write negative reviews but this novel of the women’s movement, billed as a comic satire, is so snide and unfunny that I must object. The plot centers on a loose commune of women (and a few men) planning a huge “Women’s Strike” over a summer. We learn nothing of what it takes to create a social movement, or even about feminism. Told from multiple characters’ perspectives—but primarily, Leora’s—it is laden with name-dropping, gossipy dialogue and rumination, interspersed with a few slapstick scenes. Nearly all of the characters are disparaging of others, unhappy, and disingenuous; I found it impossible to root for any of them. Sentences such as “Leora sensed herself undergoing a transformation” are just plain clunky and many of the minor characters are stereotypes. The fictional “Strike” succeeds; this novel does not.