Customer Reviews

Sarton: the Education of Harriet Hatfield (Paper )

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3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
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This is a rather tame book that challenges society's single minded focus on pigeon-holing gays and lesbians. Harriet Hatfield is a sixty-ish woman whose life changes after her female lover of 30 years dies and she decides to use her inheritance to open a woman's bookstore. In so doing she meets people and encounters experiences her sheltered past did not prepare her for, both friends and foes. However she forges on, and ultimately seems to enjoy her newfound open-ness without ever fully reconciling herself to the term "lesbian." The book provides a unique look through the eyes of an older woman who is set apart from the younger gay culture mostly by the generation gap. She is a woman who tries to overcome her own prejudices and discomfort as well as deal with being an object of prejudice herself. Because the character tries to downplay her own sexual orientation and focus being a woman in general, and to sell books that appeal to women of all types this book may be more widely read than just in the lesbian community.

This book may not be a portrait of extreme left wing revolutionaries, but it is about real people, fighting the real struggle of day to day life in world which chooses not to understand. Sarton's characters are magnificent. Harriet's determination to succeed and survive is truly an inspiration.

I found this book very dated. The writing is stiff and the flow is very stilted. It is also a little incredulous. Imagine, if you can, a woman who is a lesbian but doesb;t really know she is, although she is in a sexual relationship with a woman for many, many years. Then this partner dies and she opens a bookstore for women and within days has met an abused wife, two nuns, several lesbian couples, a homosexual couple (one of whom is not monogamous and has contracted AIDS from a casual sexual partner, etc... Oh, she also has a gay brother, a homophobic brother, and an attorney who thinks she is just plain nuts. Come on....It's just all over the top.

I have enjoyed several books by May Sarton, but not this one. Rather than telling a story, she's written a polemic - a soft diatribe against people who hate people because they are different in some way. The writing is good, but the whole thing is stiff and the events repetitive.

The main character, Harriet, makes friends way too easily. Her bookstore is a hit, which I believe, and Harriet's mourning of her lost lover who died recently is also realistic.

Another problem is I couldn't tell when the book was supposed to take place. Harriet and another guy (a doctor) were smoking cigarettes! Also she seemed stuck in the 1940s with her friend Angelica Lamb (what a stupid and obvious name) who has a maid who cooks dinner for her!

Overall the book is just not a good novel.

I can't say this book isn't well-written, it is. But it seems rather self-consciously "uplifting". The characters in it are all a bit too noble; dialogue is awkwardly formal, even for well-to-do, highly educated people. Friendships with oh-so-wonderful people are formed so easily and quickly. Many, many people like these do exist -- I know many of them; but the writer seemed to make the situation rather than let it happen -- a bit of a fairy tale, in spite of the realities of hatred that it discusses. I couldn't place the period when this takes place; Mary Daly's book, central to the story, was published in 1998, but the copyright on this novel is 1989.