The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County [Spiral-bound]

Cyra McFadden (Author), Tom Cervenak (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 1977

Here, in 52 zingy episodes, is a hilarious and deadly account of The Liberated Life a la Marin County, California - featuring that average couple, Kate and Harvey Holroyd, who belong to the Sierra Club, attend Mozart festivals, ride Motobecane ten-speeds, cherish their Cuisinart... until the sushi hits the fan and they plunge into a world of Creative Divorce Groups, macrame, lentil loaves, Personal Growth, enzymes, whip fantasies, natural fibers, and -crucial! - Staying Mellow at All Costs!.... Here they are: splitting up, marrying on mountaintops (libretto by Lorca and Gibran), committing themselves in LTRs ( Living Together Relationships), renewing - and revising - their contracts, restructuring, evolving in the universe, in a riotous, absolutely wonderful saga of the California dynamic at its most dynamic! --- excerpts from book's back cover

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 111 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (May 12, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394733614
• ISBN-13: 978-0394733616
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,156,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Marin County, California Seventy's Soap Opera, December 19, 2000

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County (Spiral-bound)

The Serial is a soap opera set in Marin County, California. Just north of the Golden Gate bridge it is the affluent epicenter of the self-obsessed. It's the tail end of the decade and the free spirit ideals of the hippy generation have become commodified and trend obsessed: natural fibres and organic produce are de rigueur, radical chic is bought in designer boutiques and everyone talks (without ever really communicating) in the psycho-babble of faddish self-help manuals. Transcendental meditation, personal growth, rebirthing, zen jogging and pet psychiatry are the order of the day. Though everyone in the hip Marin enclave thinks they're liberated and really together, they've simply become an hilarious parody of the straight world they're trying so hard to leave behind. The soap follows Kate and Harvey Holroyd's attempts to keep up with their wacked-out neighbours' fashionable credentials. A year in which they have a trial separation and experiment unsuccessfully with alternative partners and lifestyles.

The book has 52 short (2 page) chapters that my significant other and I found just right to read to each other at bedtime.

The book was often villified by fellow Marinites. Marin County had all of the wacky new age stuff, open marriages, etc., long before the rest of the country did, and this book follows a couple locked deep in the heart of it. Maybe it's not so surprising now, but it was certainly a shocker then. Otherwise, it's a funny blast from the past which means even more to me as I have lived there.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I thought it would be "dated", January 9, 2006

By 

Satia Renee "Satia Renee" (Altanta GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Serial (Prion Humour Classics S.) (Hardcover)

I read this novel as an adolescent when it first came out and was prepared to find it dated because I remembered, vaguely, that it was about open relationships and all sorts of hippie stuff that was so prevelant at the time.

How a novel that is so ensconced in a time and place can still sound relevant is remarkable. If you were to change some of the details--hairstyles, labels, even the television programs--you could transplant these characters into the present without compromising the characters or their experiences.

I reread it and found myself laughing and cringing. If everything old is new again then this book definitely proves the point. For better or worse, maybe we have not come as far as we had thought.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun and lighthearted sabotage, January 10, 2002

By 

Linda Sharps (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County (Spiral-bound)

This book is hilarious. I've read it to tatters because it's the sort of thing you can pick up, open at random, and spend a pleasant time laughing at the characters who are "slightly off balance yin-and-yangwise but definitely benign". Naturally organic satire at its finest.