When Sisterhood Was Flower

I first read this about 14 years ago and it is simply the funniest thing I have ever read in my life...ever. And I have read a LOT of funny things. Even after all these years, when I re-read the parts about the Birthing Bucket and Poore Ned's Burning you-know-what, I become weak with laughter. I remember reading this aloud to my husband and being unable to continue because I was so convulsed. This is included in The Florence King Reader and is well worth any price.

This blissfully funny novel tells the story of Isabel, an introverted writer who finds herself to her horror having to share an apartment with Polly, a humourless radical feminist who drives her crazy. Then they encounter Gloria, a medievalist with an obsession about the gruesome death of Edward the Second. Polly inherits a house in California, and they set off to travel there, on the way they gather up Agnes, an abused housewife running away from her husband, and Martha, an elderly divorcee. The book is full of wonderfully funny incidents and marvellous characters. Gloria the crazed medievalist is particularly hilarious. The part where Isabel takes a job as a writer of porno novels is hysterically funny. I wish Florence King would write a sequel, I'd love to read more about this craz bunch of characters.

When Sisterhood Was in Flower may be out of print as a single title, but it is available, in its entirety, in The Florence King Reader (which also contains excerpts from King's other books, book reviews, and uncollected essays), so mouse on over and order it. Sisterhood begins with the line "Call me Isabel.", which says a lot right there. Isabel, who has escaped from Virginia to Boston in 1971, falls in with a pair of most unlikely roommates, a cat named Quadrupet (and a pig named Farnsworth), the Don't Tread on Me feminist commune, the Sword and Scabbard porn-publishing company (don't miss their twelve author's guidelines, most of which can't be repeated in a public place), an inflatable doll, an enormous cauldron of scrapple, a raving survivalist, an Episcopalian priest -- but I don't want to give away all Isabel's secrets. I laughed out loud at Isabel's driving test, the court record involving the inflatable doll, the scarpple chase, and more scenes than I can count. Funniest thing I've read in years.