Sita [Paperback]

Kate Millett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 8, 2000

'A wrenching and intimate autobiography, "Sita" is an unsparing, moment-by-moment record of the fading of love, with all of its agony and false-dawn respites. For the first time, the original text of "Sita" is accompanied by the first of Millett's moving prose elegies, written after Sita committed suicide. This lament lends new resonance to the original text and gives the reader a fuller understanding of the mercurial devotion that bound the two women to each other. This reissue also features a new preface by the author."Sita" follows the disintegration of Millett's love affair with a woman who is ten years her senior, a veteran of several marriages, and the mother of grown children. Fiery, seductive, elegant, and exotic, "Sita" captivates Millett in every sense, offering unimagined pleasure and much-needed emotional security. One day, however, all this changes. Arriving from New York to spend half the year in Berkeley, as they had arranged, Millett is appalled to find the house - their house - overrun with Sita's troubled children and their hangers-on.Amid this unexpected chaos, she struggles with searing jealousy and self-doubt to salvage her relationship with Sita, who is often preoccupied, impatient, and cold, and who frequently disappears for assignations with male lovers. With remarkable candor, Millett charts her months with Sita and the inexorable shift from passionate abandon to abandonment. As each fragile thread of their love dissolves, Millett dwells on what drew them together, recounting all the hopes, tricks, and evasions that made up their erotic dance. Obsessive and impassioned, "Sita" speaks with a sharp immediacy to everyone who has ever experienced the exhilaration and despair of love'.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A bold and passionate book named for the woman who was Millett's lover at the time she was writing. When Sita committed suicide in 1978, Millett composed four prose elegies in her memory... [This] edition includes one of these elegies, published for the first time. Its addition enriches the story of the woman it celebrates. " -- Ms. Magazine "I stayed with [the book] as compulsively as Kate stayed with her beloved Sita." -- Chicago Tribune Book World "Sita is the fervid and fragmented tale of a woman impassioned and in love -- with a woman. It is Millett's autobiographical account of her long affair with Sita... This 2000 edition is prefaced briefly by Millett, who reexamines the contemporary importance of the text as lesbian literature." -- The Bloomsbury Review "The impression the book gives is of total honesty... Not a single detail -- emotional or anatomical -- has been left out. What lies at its heart is the head-on clash between, on the one hand, the communal and permissive ideals of the period and, on the other, the simple human need for personal space, and the knowledge that one person on Earth is, in however qualified a way, your own... This was a time when everyone was high in one way or another, desperate not to impose an ideology on anyone else, yet at the same time hyper-conscious of the brevity of life, its beauty, and its possibilities. This, at least, is what comes across in this magnificent book, so that 1977 feels like a paradise lost, despite the anguish and frustration that burn in words of fire across every page." -- Bradley Winterton, South China Morning Post

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press; 1 edition (March 8, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252068874
• ISBN-13: 978-0252068874
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,245,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a phenomenal description of love-sickness, April 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Sita (Paperback)

I agree with the first reviewer that this books is disturbing and depressing. Clearly this is not the author's finest hour as a person. But what saved it for me was that as an author, Millet really does shine. She captures the truth of being the one who loves and needs more, and it IS painful. I found this book fascinating.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A harrowing tale of lesbian love and loss, April 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Sita (Paperback)

The narrator Kate, an accomplished New York artist, returns to San Francisco after a long absence in an attempt to rekindle her steamy romance with the exotic Sita. What follows is a stream-of-consciousness narrative of hope and despair, a roller-coaster ride from erotic highs to suicidal lows. As with any love story, the reader's response depends on his/her ability to identify and sympathize with the characters, and this is where it just didn't work for me. I immediately identified the Sita character as self-absorbed, dishonest and manipulative and it was difficult to understand why an intelligent, accomplished person like Kate would allow herself to be degraded by such a lover. It occurred to me about halfway through that if Sita had been a man and the story proceeded as it did, we would call it just one more tale of low female self esteem and male emotional abuse and I doubt it would ever have been published. The one redeeming aspect of this book, however, is that it does manage to capture the claustrophobic, edge-of-sanity atmosphere that comes in the final days of a passionate love affair in it's death throes. Just be warned to lock up the liquor cabinet before you begin- a few hundred pages of this is enough to send anyone on a bender.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unflinching and fiery, August 27, 2000

By 

"blissengine" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sita (Paperback)

This autobiography of the last days of her quite obsessive relationship with Sita is the story of a dying love affair, where each day's petty slights and delightful surprises are digested for the insightful truths and harsh realities of self analysis. Like Violette Leduc, Millett charts every moment and every emotion during the days of bliss and the days of spite in the struggle to save the love they share, until Sita's ultimate betrayal by leaving for a man. Included in this new edition is a portion of the elegy Millett wrote after Sita's suicide in 1978, which is a stunning finale for this captivating memoir. Unlike other reviewers, I didn't find this at all depressing. Rather, I found this book uplifting and mesmerising.