Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir

I am a cataloging librarian and was working on Marge's latest novel when I decided to read up on her other books. As a new cat owner and a passionate woman I was attracted to this autobiography. Rarely do we ever see a memoir of a famous author's pets! I have to honestly say this is the best autobiography I have read in years. Yes, the language isn't perfect, just like the author, but it is a beautiful tale. I couldn't be more oppisite, not to mention from a totally different generation, then Ms. Piercy but I could still heartfully relate to her emotions. Her poems are treats and magically written. Yes, she does jump around and mentions things several times at different parts of the book but isn't that the way we speak of a memory? She is honest and wants you to become her companion, not a distance audience. If you have a pet you will relate to her heartfelt goodbyes to her beloved children. She keeps mentioning how she does not regret never having children, however this whole piece is her relationships with her 4 legged kids!:) What a beautiful, sincere and talented woman she is - I hope to one day meet her (update: I did! And brought this book. She told me that rarely do people bring this one when they meet her, she thought it was magical). I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an open soul.

Marge Piercy is well-known for her poetry and for her semi-science fiction novel "Woman on the Edge of Time." She has won literary awards and is certainly an American woman writer of great note. Her honesty and brutal clarity in rendering her memoirs is that more startling, as much of it is unpleasant and she hardly spares herself.Piercy grew up in a lower class Detroit neighborhood, and was brutally beaten by her father while her needs as an adolescent girl were pretty much ignored by her mother. She found love in girl gangs, had illicit sex with both girls and boys, and yet was accepted to University of Michigan, the best public university in the state. Her career there was as an outsider--she was not the typical well-off, middle class sorority or dorm co-ed with cashmere sweaters and pearls. Instead, Piercy started the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and wrote, winning the prestigious Hopwood writing award at U of M. Her writing career spanned the times she belonged to communes, then became disenchanted with the increasingly dogmatic Marxist left movement in the 60's. She bounced from Europe to New York to Boston, to Cape Cod, now her home. In all her writing, Piercy has an uncanny ability to describe her minute observations of place and feeling, a gift attributes to her emotional mother. She expresses the anger at her distant and brutal father, whom she obliquely blames for her mother's death (she had a stroke and he did not call the ambulance service until he had meticulously picked up every fragment of a fluorescent bulb she had broken during her fall.) Her "open marriage" is described with all the ambiguity of such a relationship.No one writes more grittily, more deeply observant than Piercy--the parts of "Woman on the Edge of Time" where the main character is struggling to leave an insane asylum, are so realistic and troubling, it helps to know Piercy from her memoirs to better understand her craft. If you like Piercy's writing, this memoir is a fine way to get to know her and to gain a better understanding of how she creates her fiction and poetry.

My girlfriend loaned me this book. I read it for a few hours one evening, and nearly finished it the next. I worked in the NYC movement that Ms Piercy describes and knew people she mentions.This is a memoir that I could call my own; it describes her, my, and our generation's journey from our working class backgrounds to our own knowledge-worker class, who put aside the acquisition of monetary success in favor of having a life in a small town, and sleeping with cats. I'm a cat person, tho currently without one, and thoroughly enjoyed her cat stories. My story with my aging parents is similar to hers.There is much laughter, here, in watching cats.There are tears to be shed, too, watching cats, friends, lovers, parents, come into our lives and make their exits.I'll buy my own copy, to read again and write down her quotes:"Freedom is choice."I'll buy this book for each of my children; it describes well the journey of me and many of my 60s friends.

Lyrically written, Marge Piercy dances us through her childhood, coming of age, and adulthood. A portrait of the blooming of the new left in the sixties; open marriage, the flaws, fallacies, and avenues of personal growth; and cats, little cats and the specialness of old cats. I loved this book. I read it on my long commute home, and now that I have finished it, I feel like I am missing a friend. When I can think about it without crying, I will write a letter to Marge Piercy and tell her how much I loved this book.An update: I did write to Ms Piercy, and much to my surprise, she wrote me back! I was pleased to learn she has added an Abyssinian cat to her current menagerie, a breed that have been my constanct companions since college.

I have been a Marge Piercy fan for years, more of her novels than her poems. I eagerly snatched up this book and read it in one day. In some ways it reminds me of May Sarton's autobigoraphy though the two are quite different; Piercy writes from a less erudite, less upper-class, more working-class perspective. Piercy writes honestly and openly about her life, loves, and trials and tribulations as a writer. It was especially interesting to read about how she still sees herself as struggling and working hard to make ends meet because she has not achieved the commercial success to make her rich. The strongest parts of the book for me were those about her relationships with men, particularly her three husbands. She does not hold back in detailing her hopes, denials of reality, and what she calls her "selfishness" in terms of making writing a priority. As she herself suggests she is not always the most "likable" person but she is honest, direct, and really makes you think. You really get to see how she evolves as a person, how she comes to stand up for what she really wants, not what society tells her she should do, e.g. stay in a marriage and "make it work." I cheered for her when she finally finds her "soulmate", or at least a partner that seems to understand her and make her happy.The parts about the cats I could have done without, not being a cat person. I also wish there had been more about her political involvement; the emphasis of the book on her personal relationships with family, lovers and friends suggests that the "personal" has been more central to her life than the political. Though she does mention her involvement with pro-choice politics, her political activities are quite peripheral to the book.Another thing I enjoyed is that you get to see how the characters of her novels come out of her life experiences. Piercy does not hesitate to let the reader know her for better or for worse, her fears, her pettiness, her victories, her commitments and her tenacity. A worthwhile read!