Stiff Upper Lib

By Martha Duffy

SMALL CHANGES by MARGE PIERCY 562 pages. Doubleday. $8.95.

Marge Piercy's last novel, Dance the Eagle to Sleep, was clamorously received two years ago. She wrote about the angry counterculture--runaway kids, commune dwellers--with a contemporary's sympathetic understanding and a traditional fiction style. It seemed the ideal book for the over-the-counterculture fellow who wanted to be imaginatively in touch with the hard-edged confusions of youth.

Small Changes almost totally lacks that earlier book's homely virtues. The dust jacket says that Miss Piercy has become active in the feminist movement, and instead of creating believable characters, she has set some stick figures in motion to illustrate her conviction that women would be better off if they organized their lives without men. There are two main characters. Beth is a plain girl from a very simple background who runs away from a brutalizing husband and settles in Boston, where she becomes involved in women's communes and lesbianism. Miriam is a brilliant beauty who wastes her energies on a succession of truculent male losers, all in the name of security.

The men in Dance the Eagle to Sleep were not all admirable, but they were lively, unpredictable people. In Small Changes they are oppressive, lethargic and sexually incompetent. It is possible to be very critical of men and still produce subtle, energetic male characters, as Doris Lessing has proved. Piercy gives evidence of finding the task beneath her notice.

There is some interesting material in the book, especially about women's communes in shabby Boston suburbs like Somerville and Allston. Someone is always arriving with two or three little children. Everyone is tired, broke and oddly exhilarated. Even in these scenes without men, the musk of female superiority is heavy indeed. The children grow strong, tough and alert. Organic rye bread rises on every page, along with wheat germ, Granola and currents. Sex with another woman seems a sure cure for repression. Beth learns "to love with her body, to express with her body, to know with her body." There are trackless acres of such prose. It is all enough to give lesbianism a bad name--and vegetarianism too. qedMartha Duffy

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