Hunters and Gatherers
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times–bestselling author takes on New Agers as one woman searches for meaning in this “brilliantly satiric but . . . sweet-natured” novel (Publishers Weekly).
Thirty-year-old Martha is stagnating in a demeaning, woefully underpaid job as a fact-checker at frothy fashion magazine Mode and an unhappy relationship with an unrepentant jerk. But she stumbles upon an unlikely new circle of friends when she interrupts a goddess-worshipping ceremony on Fire Island and ends up rescuing its accident-prone leader, Isis Moonwagon, from the waves.
From the steel skyscrapers of Manhattan to a sweat lodge in the Arizona desert, Martha chases fulfillment and self-actualization in the company of this group of opinionated, bumbling women, but the revelations she receives are not necessarily what she expected.
“Prose’s satiric vision could not be more sharply focused here, and her powers of observation and deadpan humor never falter” as she sends up the New Age movement and its over-earnest adherents (The Miami Herald).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Prose (Bigfoot Dreams; Primitive People) has been steadily simplifying her work since the rather complex constructions of her earlier books, and her latest novel shows a striking advance in both economy and focus. Her protagonist, Martha, is a relentlessly literal-minded person (she's a fact checker at a chic women's magazine) whose emotional life is a mess, and who takes up, in the wake of a failed romance, with a group of zany women who have allied themselves with a contemporary Goddess cult. Their leader, Isis Moonwagon, is a sweepingly compassionate but accident-prone former academic who sees visions but has to fight hard to keep her often brutally cynical troops in line (about the only thing they have in common is a profound loathing for men). Martha, a perpetual outsider, wins their trust by saving Isis from drowning during a bungled ocean ceremony at a Fire Island beach; she then stays with them on a manic expedition to visit a noted Native American healer/priestess deep in the Arizona desert. Prose has some expected fun at the expense of these well-fixed Manhattan women and their sometimes inconvenient passion for primitivism, but so acute is her ear, so exact her sense of character, that the book is wonderfully comic, with a sharp undertone of rue. These elements combine magically in the Arizona scenes, focussing on dancing and drumming ceremonies and a sweat lodge experience, seen always through poor Martha's skeptical eyes (she fakes her period to avoid the sweat lodge). The conclusion--involving a hunt for the missing teenage daughter of one of the women, and an encounter with a man who stands all the women's bitter theories on their heads--is beautifully realized, with a breathtaking and utterly unexpected flash-forward for Martha. This is civilized, witty and thoughtful entertainment, brilliantly satiric but basically sweet-natured and true. .
