The Commune

This novel about the women’s movement is billed as a comic satire but I found it to be more of a snide, thinly veiled tale of revenge. Told from at least eight characters’ perspectives—but primarily, from Leora’s—it is laden with name-dropping, gossipy dialogue, and rumination, interspersed with a few slapstick scenes, such as a kayak overturning. Nearly all of the characters are spiteful, disparaging of others, unhappy, and disingenuous, and I found it impossible to root for any of them. Sentences such as “Leora sensed herself undergoing a transformation” are just plain clunky.

The plot centers on a loose commune of women and men over a summer spent planning a huge “Women’s Strike,” but we learn nothing of what it takes to create a social movement, only pseudo-feminists being alternately catty, lusty, insecure, or mean-spirited. I very rarely write negative reviews, but while the fictional “strike” succeeds, this novel does not.