Pamela Sargent
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By: Benbella Books
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12
Average rating: 5.0 of 5
Intelligent, Imaginative, Beautifully Wrought--And OOP 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.
Pamela Sargent's The Shore of Women works out in persuasively anthropological detail--almost Geertzian "thick description," if you will--a post-apocalyptic world in which women rule with space-age technologies from walled citadels, exiling male children into literal stone age societies of isolated bands clad in animal skins, where lives are nasty, brutish, and short. The violence of Sargent's largely paleolithic male society is mitigated only by its loving devotion to "The Goddess" and her cult, visits to the shrines in which prayer and worshipful communion with the deity transpires, and the occasional "callings" to the enclaves--simultaneously the preeminent male rite of passage and the sole (blind and thoroughly mediated) interaction with the ruling society that enables both worlds to procreate and persist. Within city walls, the master society is strictly bifurcated into elite and masses, in which the custodians of established order replace themselves, presiding over the bought indifference of commoners. Sargent is a beautifully expressive writer who works out the logic of her story to persuasive conclusions and, along the way, has smart, thoroughly rendered observations to make on societies of women and of men, the humanistic origins of religion, small group interactions under duress, the transformation of nomadic bands into sedentary cultures, the possible retreat of civilization from its points of greatest advancement, a variety of contemporary feminist political ideas, and more. At times, The Shore of Women brought to mind a host of antecedents, including A Canticle for Leibowitz, Lord of the Flies, The Golden Bough, Greek and Roman mythology, captivity stories from 17th and 18th century prisoners of American woodland Indians, the writings of Margaret Meade and other classic anthropologists, and other possible references, but without seeming directly dependent on any. Its principal characters, the inquisitive newly "called" man Arvil and the cast-out woman Birana, are beautifully developed and pass through punctuated sequences of change and unfolding awareness. A third point of view is provided by Laissa, who as the daughter of one of the "Mothers of the City" progresses on her own surprising journey of discovery...
Editorial Review:
Women rule the world in this suspenseful love story set in a postnuclear future. Having expelled men from their vast walled cities to a lower-class wilderness, the women in this futuristic universe dictate policy and chart the future through control of scientific and technological advances. Among their laws are the rules for reproductive engagement, an act now viewed as a means of procreation rather than an act of love. In this rigidly defined environment, a chance meeting between a woman exiled from the female world and a wilderness man triggers a series of feelings, actions, and events that ultimately threaten the fabric of the women's constricted society. Trying to evade the ever-threatening female forces and the savage wilderness men, the two lovers struggle to find a safe haven and reconcile the teachings of their upbringings with their newly awakened feelings.
