As a political novel Vida has certain weaknesses. The narrative is swollen by the need to do justice to the breadth of the counter-culture—everyone gets a mention, from hippies to draft dodgers, organic farmers to drug runners, gay rights activists to Hare Krishna freaks. Involvement is broken by the need to make connexions, place events and disentangle factions. A more serious charge is that the implications of the politics of action involved in "bringing the war home" are not fully confronted….

Indeed the real strength of the book lies not in its historical analysis but in the power with which the loneliness and desolation of the central characters are portrayed. Successors to the isolated, high-principled outsiders of Marge Piercy's previous novels, these outlaws are deprived of glamour, despite their romantic code names "Jesse" and "Peregrine". Their lives are created with unremitting realism, and the compulsive attention to...