Word: dinah
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...Willie and Susan] always made love on Christmas Eve. Willie would have been frightened if they had not, for it would have seemed to him unlucky. In the morning he got up early and went to bring Dinah her presents. They made love that morning. By the time they had breakfast, Susan would be up...she would go to find Dinah and they would share early or midafternoon of Christmas Day...They would all feel cherished, they would feel each relationship individually burnished and their ties strengthened...
However, Piercy's attempt to integrate these themes falls short. The result is that the characters themselves are shallow and unlikeable. Piercy's thoughtful writing and believable dialogue are only barely enough to keep us reading to find out what happens when a fight between Dinah and Susan ruptures the 10-year triangle...
...Piercy fails to resolve the problems she sets herself. She never explains why Susan and Dinah argue, or why each responds to the fight the way she does. Dinah's loneliness leads to her new relationship with Itzak, a renowned flautist. But this development seems almost a non sequitur to the rest of the plot. So does the affair between Laurie and Jimmy, who have been friends since childhood...
Piercy chooses the easy--and uninteresting--way out of the conflicts she creates between her characters. Her supposedly unconventional protagonists select the most conventional of solutions. The novel would have been more interesting if Dinah had chosen not to take another lover, or if Piercy had established a more credible foundation for the relationship between Laurie and Jimmy...
...places, Piercy's writing style is rich with detail and sharp pithy phrases. She describes the beach: "they sat on the top of the outermost dune watching the waves slide in below, sinuous, cracking the whip of their white backs over the hidden sandbars." Dinah rebels against the routines of her first, marriage, screaming, "'I don't see what liking to fuck you has to do with being confused with a laundry service!'" Or Susan's feelings for Willie: "Susan could feel her desire for him seeping back like sweet red wine, like mulled wine spicy and hot and tipsy...