While there has been no shortage of criticism of radical feminists and New Age proselytizers, there has been little fiction that dissects these follies with skill—at least until now. Hunters and Gatherers, Francine Prose’s hilarious satire of the odder progeny of the women’s movement—not to mention the Native American “healers” on whom some of these women rely for spiritual guidance—goes a long way toward filling the void.
The book opens with the protagonist, Martha, a thirty-year-old fact-checker at a New York fashion magazine, wandering alone down a beach on Fire Island. Her boyfriend has just left her, and, hesitant and unsure thanks to her failures in love and in life, she is ripe for the comedy about to befall her.
On her walk she notices a number of women who seem to know one another and, unlike herself, to have come here for a purpose: they “paired off and gazed warmly into each other’s eyes until they fell into melting embraces; then, regretfully, they separated, and each floated off down the beach to another woman, another gaze, another soulful embrace.” What Martha has witnessed is not a seaside staging of some trendy play, but a ritual of a “Driud holy night, a late-summer revel and gathering-in of female force.” The woman who talks to Martha first is Randi, or Hegwitha (her “Goddess” name); the others in her circle are Titania, Freya, Diana, Joy, and Bernie. The group’s leader, Isis Moonwagon, is a former academic turned
