This book is about so many different things it's very difficult to know where to begin. It's a remarkably easy book to read. Remarkable because it is such a difficult, even gruelling subject matter--the deterioration and death of a parent--but the book is so gorgeously lucid, so vivid, that it's very hard to stop reading.

Of course, it isn't just about the life and death of Charnas' father but about how little we know about one another, how horrible (though sometimes glorious) old age and death can be. This is a book about not knowing your father (a difficult relationship even for those of us whose fathers didn't leave us), about thwarted artistic aspirations, about the impossible choices old age brings, and the ways in which every human being has a story, a life, and some of the unexpected things most of us never find out.

I cannot reccommend this book more strongly. I have not been able to stop thinking about it. It's a book that really can change your life.

This is a story about real life. An artist father of a writer daughter. A father who walked away when she was eight. A father who in his last decade of life became dependant on his daughter, the stranger.

Don't expect saccharine, 'cause there ain't any. No sugar cookies and milk, this is molasses and tea: bitter, dark, and poignant. Revelations, yes, but not of the TV sitcom kind, which are easily provoked and resolved in half an hour. This is deep history, it's the sand in the backyard and the gnarled old olive tree.

It's a story told with exasperation and something like love. A story told brilliantly. Thought-provoking reading for those of us with parents heading into their last decade -- parents with whom we share a bad history.

Here's a woman who offers refuge to a man who is going blind, and who holds a menial job in a restaurant. She offers him a free home in the sunshine, and the chance to do art.

He arrives on her doorstep and proceeds to be exactly the same man he's always been: cantankerous, rude, and skeptical. He doesn't do any art -- not by choice, as it turns out. He doesn't have the emotional resources to make friends and have his own life. Heck, he doesn't even have the ability to make his own dinner.

It's a fascinating story, and Charnas is an amazing writer. We get an unvarnished portrait of this man, his daughter, and a series of glimmers into why he left her mother, and why he's such a crank. If another living situation would have been ideal, well that's too bad because they're caught in the vise-grip of American medical economics. He's here to stay, like it or not. Then when his health fails completely, maybe he's too sick to stay home, but maybe not sick enough for Medicare to pay for a bed in a nursing home. Do she and her husband bankrupt themselves to give him adequate care? Charnas' livelihood hangs in the balance, not to mention her sanity.

Who hasn't been there? And if we haven't been there, we will be soon. For those of us with difficult parents, it's enlightening to see how one woman's choices begin to unfold. She's no angel of the house -- her own discomfort comes through, and she combats it with exasperated humor.

MY FATHER'S GHOST left me with a lasting understanding of tradeoffs. Good parts, bad parts. What I could stand, and what I couldn't. I can't make the same choices she did -- unless, like Charnas, I have to. But the whatever happens, at least I'll go in girded.

This is a wonderful book, and hard to compare to any other. Sort of a biography (but of an unknown man, a failed artist, someone without any of the usual qualities calling for an official biography), sort of an autobiography/literary memoir (by the author of hard-hitting feminist science fiction, fantasy, children's books, etc.), a personal investigation into what happens to the old and helpless in America, a daughter's memoir of her difficult father... I'm not usually attracted to memoirs, but like Suzy Charnas' fiction so much that I gave it a chance -- and am so glad I did. It is every bit as gripping and absorbing as one of her novels, and, amazingly for a work that focuses so much on her father's declining years, it's not at all bleak -- there are some unexpected surprises along the way, and the lasting impression is an uplifting one. The book raises many important issues around family relationships and aging in America today; it's thought-provoking, and informative, whatever your age and whatever your relationship to your parents. (Well, perhaps the super-rich and the extra-young could give it a miss, but as for the rest of us, this book is important.) Undoubtedly, one of the best books I've read this year. In non-fiction, it goes right up there with Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed". Highly recommended.

The premise of _The Vampire Tapestry_ is interesting enough, and makes the book worth reading - a presentation of the vampire not as a supernatural creature but instead some high-order product of evolution. I also appreciated the doing-away-with on Charnas' part of some the genre's more tired cliches such as nocturnalism and the self-pitying introspection that plagues certain other popular vampire characters.

The book apparently grew out of a short story once published in _Omni_ magazine. Unfortunately, the work doesn't seem to shake of that feeling. The five chapters are rather disjointed in segue from one to the next. It feels less like a cohesive novel and more like an anthology centered around a single character.

Our vampire protagonist, Dr. Weyland, starts off as an intriguing enigma, but towards the climax of the book, it seems Weyland is more bored than anything. However, this malaise may have been intentional, and it does serve to explain his actions at the end of the story.

In the course of plot development, Weyland's confidence and amorality are slowly replaced with suggestions of human-like frailty and compassion. These characteristics are brought about by a series of encounters between Weyland and a psychiatrist. Having read this 1979 work for the first time in 1999, I found the author's underlying implication that psychotherapy can take care of any emotional problem to be a bit dated.

One final note; As a citizen of Albuquerque, I was initially drawn to this book because the back cover indicated that it was a vampire story set in New Mexico. In actuality, three of the five chapters take place in New York. If you're looking at purchasing this book for the southwestern setting, consider yourself warned.

A truly excellent book made up of three related novellas from the 'life' of Dr Edward Weyland. Entertaining, intelligent, flawless - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Surprisingly this author has also written a light vampire romance under the name 'Brand' - called 'The Ruby Tear' (which I have yet to read)...

Wow! This book takes a very unusual and very well plotted path to the vampire tale. Reminds me in spots of Nancy Baker's work, but this is a better written book with some thought provoking insights into the things all creatures must do to co-exist, adapt and survive. The author brings in some interesting ideas about the relationships between hunter and prey, and the inevitability of change over time. Good read.

This is one to try if you are tired of Draula re-treads, and cape-and-fang skulkings.

I have read all four books in the Holdfast Chronicles. I have sometimes wondered what the world would be like in a matriarchal society where women made most of the decisions. Would women be as violent and war-like as men have been throughout history? I doubt it! However, the women in Ms. Charnas post-holocaust world are surprisingly like their former (male) masters. I prefer the utopian world of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Herland". Neither worlds are particularly believable. But it is interesting to speculate.

First, I don't know if this book would have the same impact if you hadn't already read the preceding three. That said, this novel is one of the best I've ever read (as are its predecessors). The characters are rich and complex, filled with contradiction and capable of growth and change. The dynamics of the interactions between different groups of people are as intricate and convoluted as in real life. The world of the Holdfast--both its culture and ecology--is described in rich detail. The prose is so good that it is invisible. I was transported into the future world of the Holdfast and was never drawn back to the present by a clumsy bit of exposition. You won't like this book if you don't like character-driven novels, or if you think that strong women characters have to be perfect. The Free Fems and the New Free are far from perfect, but they are utterly human, and doing their best to create a new way to live from the ashes of the old. 4 thumbs up! I strongly recommend that you read the whole series: The Slave and the Free (2 books in one), The Furies, and The Conqueror's Child.

The Holdfast/Motherlines series reaches a triumphant conclusion with this fourth volume. Many authors might have ended with the third novel, THE FURIES, in which the Free Fems, with the help of the Riding Women, invade the Holdfast and overcome the men, their former masters. But the reversal of roles between masters and slaves is only the beginning. As the young heroine says in the epilogue of THE CONQUEROR'S CHILD, there are no real endings.

This final book focuses on the "next generation"; the warriors led by Alldera the Conqueror have won back their homeland, and now her followers must build a new society, where men and woman can live at peace together for the first time in centuries. The renegade male who returns from the wilderness to attack the female-ruled Holdfast proves to be an anachronism; so also, however, does Alldera, already in the process of growing into a legend. The major viewpoint character, Alldera's daughter Sorrel (NOT "adopted daughter"), flees the Grasslands for the Holdfast with a boy child she has taken under her protection. The narrative follows the structure of Dickens' BLEAK HOUSE and Bradley's HERITAGE OF HASTUR, alternating chapters told in the first person by Sorrel with third-person chapters focusing on various other characters, thus combining the advantages of both intimacy and breadth.

Given that men must be kept alive for breeding, must they remain forever prisoners or chattel? Can they ever be trusted? Can they learn to live with females as equals? Can both men and women forget old bitterness and hate? What will become of the new generation of male children? Ambiguous, multifaceted, lifelike characters work together toward answers. Even though there are no "real endings," Sorrel's epilogue ties up a number of loose ends to provide closure for the reader.

This is another of those seredipitous finds in the unsavory neighborhood's secondhand bookshops. Charnas, the writer, goes into meticulous detail on the characters, daily life, food, clothing, and problems of an earth after the great "Wasting", when the Ancients destroyed and polluted our planet, save in certain small strongholds, such as Holdfast. In the environs of Holdfast, girls and boys are raised separately, as kits and cubs. The cubs are brought up in the Boyhouse, not knowing mother or father, since the threat to the older men is that the younger men will rise up and try to cease power from their fathers. The girls are bred in kitpits, fighting for the measly portions of seaweed-derived food, and prepared to be slaves to the men. They speak their own "femspeech", soft and slurred and always deferring to the men, with such phrases as "please-you-master" thrown in at the end of all sentences and strict avoidance of the word "I". Our heroine Alldera manages to escape to the forbidden wild hinterlands, and stumbles about pregnant through uninhabited valleys and forests, until discovered by a band of women called the Riders, who live from their horses and grains. There she is rescued, gives birth to a girl, and becomes a rider herself, until conflicts arise in her loyalties. She ventures off to find the 'Free Fems", those slaves who escaped and who live banded together elsewhere in the hinterlands. She finds herself ill at ease there, too, and not accepted for her detached discomfort.

More I will not tell, but for a reader like me, who at heart knows we are all lonely souls passing through the universe, there is something addictively seductive in a story of a loner who flees from one trap of slavery to the next, thinking and analyzing as she goes, trying to decide what she really wants. Many good scifi books are in this vein of an explorer of strange civilizations not understanding how to find his/her own "happiness", how to fit in.

What makes it all more pertinent to us now in 2001 is that the book was written 25 years ago, at the height of the women's movement in the USA, and reeks of an antipathy towards men because of their power over women. Since another generation has been born since then without that chip on their shoulder (theoreti8cally!!!), it's almost historic to read this now. You can think later, how far have women come, really? Are things different than then? I think so, but that's another subject.

Excellent story, with only one caveat - odd names and many of them make the plot sometimes hard to follow. The author also has the traditional mindset to let the reader know if a woman is "goodlooking" or not, regardless if it's relevant to the story.

Amazing how the beauty question will never be laid to rest. Women will always have it tough in this regard, as aging Michael Douglas can lure young actresses to bed, wed them and breed 'em.

From page one I found this book fascinating. The idea of a future where men and women have absolutely no use for one another...unless to subjugate and procreate. Very thought provoking.

This volume is a reprint of the first two novels of Charnas's Holdfast series, *Walk to the End of the World* and *Motherlines*. Together, these two novels were awarded a Retrospective Tiptree Award in 1996 and at last they are back in print.

Charnas writes in a spare, calm style that sets off the strangeness of the plot and setting to great effect. All of the Holdfast books (the series is now complete after four volumes) take place in an indeterminately distant future after the world ecosystem has collapsed and nearly all humans have died, along with most large species of animals. The residents of the Holdfast are descendants of the lucky few who were able to hide out underground in secret government shelters and who emerged after "the Wasting" to found a new society. The men of the Holdfast think they know what caused the collapse of civilization: the influence of women. Now known as 'fems', women are drudges and breeders and are beaten or killed for the flimsiest of reasons or no reason at all.

The first book recounts the journey of three men and a fem to find the father of one of the men. The plot twists are completely unpredictable and harrowing. It left me shaken, but giddy with all that the author had attempted and succeeded at. The second book follows the fem out into the wilderness beyond the Holdfast, where she discovers an undreamt of society of women who breed horses and reproduce without need of men. She also discovers a group of escaped fems like herself. And all is not sweetness and light. These are wonderful books that address power relationships with a psychological realism and depth of thought that I haven't often seen. And they are founding texts of feminist sf.

Suzy McKee Charnas is better known for her adult fiction and non-fiction (she is the author of _The Verbal Art of Self-Defense_). I picked this book up for a buck and thought, what could I lose?

The better question may have been, for a buck, what could I gain? That's not to say that this novel is bad. Charnas is too much of a professional to have written a *bad* book. And there are some little twists to the genre that she nicely pulls off. But, on the whole, it's rather unimaginative.

The protagonist is a girl whose favorite aunt has just died, and she's quite bummed about it. So when she finds herself slipping into another world from Central Park, she is skeptical--especially since the hero of this other world is Kevin Malone, a bully who used to pick on her.

As I said, not a bad book. There's your typical walking skeletons, and the little people, and the quests. But there's also a more gritty, personal nature to the protagonist. I'm not sure it is altogether successful, but it was at least interesting.

This book was awesome! I could hardly wait to start reading it again after I went to school or had do something. I encourage everyone to buy and read this book. Believe me,it's on my top favorite list!! So,don't waste any time in reading this delightful,enchanting,engrossing fantasy book!!

This book was really good. I wonder what the creatures that Kevin created looked like. And I would definately buy the sequel. If there is going to be one.

Not only was this book one of the typical, some little fourteen-year-old-girl-has-to-save-the-world-or-it-will-all-be-destroyed book, which it was, but also the writing was REALLY undescriptive. I don't have an example right now, because I had to borrow the book from the teacher, but I can remember that it was really annoying, to the point where I actually noticed, which is really saying something.
And sometimes, people did really stupid things that they knew would have had no effect whatsoever, like at the end, when the monster was in the water, she threw her wallet at it, which was full of silver coins that her grandma gave to her! Useful. I would have done that, too...
And if I came home and the linoleum from the kitchen floor was gone, I would be at least sort of freaked out...

The first thing about this book that bugged me was the fact that it had extremely undescriptive writing. 'I saw my mom. She slapped me so hard I saw stars.' Doesn't say much, does it?
I find the plot to be very steriotypical: there is a big monster that's going to destroy the whole world, and you're the ONLY ONE who can stop it!
Also, the characters seem to have almost no personality. I had to write a book report on this book, and when they asked, the only difference that I could find between Joel and Paavo was that Paavo smoked tobacco, and Joel smoked marijuana. I think that speaks for itself.
And one last thing, it bugged me when, when the monster was there, she threw her little coin purse at it that was full of silver coins that her Grandma gave her! Like that's going to do anything. What a waste.

This book is what every fantasy should be like. It's perfect, exciting, funny and thoroughly wonderful. All fantasy fans and fans of New York City should read this book!

A superficial look would result in discarding the book as a summary of the irrational ideology separatist lesbian and feminists tend to harbour. (I have met some so I can compare with real life.) But apart of revealing the abstruse ideology of these social fringe group the book does more: it captures the reader in a world of struggle of a formerly oppressed group against the dominant group and exposes the underlying ethics or nonethics beneeth. The atrocities described in this book are real, happening today in various countries torn by civil war, be it in the former jugoslavia, in ruanda or in afganistan. This book sheds light on the sociolocal and psychological dynamics and this is its very strenght. Apart from that it is one of the very few books where I skipped whole chapters because of boredom - but still was intrigued ennough later to return and find out what actually happened in the story. Even decieded to buy a sequel.

But then I collect queer s/f and fantasy books.

Hard to believe anyone could find anything in it boring enough to skip through. I tore through it in a day. The characters are especially well drawn and distinct. I don't know how Charnas does it.

The themes aren't wishy-washy and wimpy. Don't you want to yell at the book sometimes? Or at least what the people do and think? Yes. That's good.

Some have found the sequel, "The Conqueror's Child" to be better, or "Motherlines" before it, but this one is in my opinion the the best, most brutal one of the bunch. It's fast and action-packed, one of those great showdowns, vindications, coups de grace, whatever.

Sorry this is a patchy review, I tried!

The Furies is a book that makes you think. I found it captivating and couldn' t put it down once I started it. Alldera is a heroin complete with self-doubt and other human failings. Her relationships with Sheel, Eykar Bek and her own people, the Free Fems make for great action and emotion. A totally believable character. I found the Riding Women of the grasslands facinating.

The original concept was intriguing and kept me very interested. Even the men sections were deep in imagery. I can still see the lactating women's houses and the milk cakes. But in this book, which I waited a long time to get since it was out of print, and I wanted it very badly, was too brutal. I would share it with very few friends. The characters agonized so much I lost tract of what they were worried about. A map would have helped

A hopeful vision of a possible world in which mankind has almost destroyed everything on the planet and in which womankind is trying to survive.

Charnas really captures the imagination and inspires young adults to think in different and interesting ways. Reminiscent of city-themed "girl's novels," like _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,_ this is about another young woman's coming of age-- but with a sorceress for a grandmother. It's a wild read, riveting to the very end, and is great for boys and girls alike. Action, adventure, mystery, and the supernatural all collide in Charnas' book, and here's hoping you can find a copy since they're out of print!

Charnas crafts a dystopia based on vilest trait of our culture: intolerance, notably racism and mysogyny.

Of the two, I much preferred _Motherlines_, simply because the characters and the culture of the free women are so much more compelling and interesting than those of the men in the first book.

These are not books for light reading, nor are the books likely to be popular with men; too bad. But if you're the type who gets uncomfortable with feminist content, you are not going to enjoy these books. But I sure did; both are damn good books.