I cannot possibly rate this book. It has nettled me; I have written pages of notes, partially copying down insightful passages and partially writing paragraphs trying to figure out why a particular passage strikes me as false or unearned. Of course the gender politics are...frustrating, at best, partially because the insight and the self-loathing (Sarton would not have recognized it as that, but) are so tied up together. Partially because, like Le Guin in The Left Hand of Darkness, Sarton wrote this novel at a time when the like, basic foundational language of feminism was very much still being invented, but Sarton seems less aware of the linguistic/culturally-accepted-reality gap she is trying to cross and encircle.
Everything sbout this novel partially, but. It certainly set things in motion in me. ( )

I had previously only read May Sarton's 'Journal of a Solitude', which I loved. So I started reading this novel with high expectation and was for the most part not disappointed. I felt disconnected towards the mid to the end of the interview and the epilogue but Sarton's way of writing about a woman's life was felt throughout. ( )

Upon its publication in the early 1960s, May Sarton worried that Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing would result in her forever being classified as a lesbian writer. That she was a lesbian was no secret since she had lived on openly homosexual life with relationships with notables such as Elizabeth Bowen. Her concern was that readers would focus on the characters bisexuality and miss what she had to say about love which to her was the same whether it was shared as part of a gay or straight relationship. Early in Mrs. Stevens... she tells a young protegee, "Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see..." and then counsels that it doesn't matter whom one loves as long as one does. Love to Sarton is a journey of discovery, with self discovery being perhaps the greatest end to the quest.

The plot of the novel details a day in the life of the now elderly Mrs. Hilary Stevens, upper middle class American, raised in genteel remoteness but stylish parents in Boston and abroad. In early adulthood she finds herself the author of a controversial novel which she thinks is a fake and then soon after as the wife of a seemingly robust Englishman who had been ruined by the war. Later she becomes a poet of some renowned, and then a forgotten poet buried in anthologies. At the point where the novel begins, Hilary's secluded life on Cape Cod has been interrupted by a late wave of fame. Her newest volume of poems has raised interest in her again, hence on the day of the story she is to be interviewed by a pair of reporters. Her preparations for the interview have caused her to rethink her life and work, and especially the influences of some of the Muses to her art. In relief to this, she has become a mentor to a young man who is suffering from the failure of a love affair between himself and an older man.

Readers who like a pensive book about love, life and art which is long on soul though light on action are likely to enjoy this novel. As always Sarton's prose has a womanly sturdiness to it, nearly as fragrant and vivid as Colette's, an author summoned several times by Mrs. Stevens. One thing that Mrs. Stevens insists on is that woman writers must retain their femininity.

I found Mrs. Stevens oddly similar to John Updike's Seek My Face. The similarity was so striking that midway through I sought out my volumes of Updike's reviews and essays to see if at any point he mentioned Ms. Sarton's novel. I found little mention of Sarton at all. Odd since they have a great deal in common. ( )

Upon its publication in the early 1960s, May Sarton worried that Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing would result in her forever being classified as a lesbian writer. That she was a lesbian was no secret since she had lived on openly homosexual life with relationships with notables such as Elizabeth Bowen. Her concern was that readers would focus on the characters bisexuality and miss what she had to say about love which to her was the same whether it was shared as part of a gay or straight relationship. Early in Mrs. Stevens... she tells a young protegee, "Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see..." and then counsels that it doesn't matter whom one loves as long as one does. Love to Sarton is a journey of discovery, with self discovery being perhaps the greatest end to the quest.

The plot of the novel details a day in the life of the now elderly Mrs. Hilary Stevens, upper middle class American, raised in genteel remoteness but stylish parents in Boston and abroad. In early adulthood she finds herself the author of a controversial novel which she thinks is a fake and then soon after as the wife of a seemingly robust Englishman who had been ruined by the war. Later she becomes a poet of some renowned, and then a forgotten poet buried in anthologies. At the point where the novel begins, Hilary's secluded life on Cape Cod has been interrupted by a late wave of fame. Her newest volume of poems has raised interest in her again, hence on the day of the story she is to be interviewed by a pair of reporters. Her preparations for the interview have caused her to rethink her life and work, and especially the influences of some of the Muses to her art. In relief to this, she has become a mentor to a young man who is suffering from the failure of a love affair between himself and an older man.

Readers who like a pensive book about love, life and art which is long on soul though light on action are likely to enjoy this novel. As always Sarton's prose has a womanly sturdiness to it, nearly as fragrant and vivid as Colette's, an author summoned several times by Mrs. Stevens. One thing that Mrs. Stevens insists on is that woman writers must retain their femininity.

I found Mrs. Stevens oddly similar to John Updike's Seek My Face. The similarity was so striking that midway through I sought out my volumes of Updike's reviews and essays to see if at any point he mentioned Ms. Sarton's novel. I found little mention of Sarton at all. Odd since they have a great deal in common. ( )

Upon its publication in the early 1960s, May Sarton worried that Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing would result in her forever being classified as a lesbian writer. That she was a lesbian was no secret since she had lived on openly homosexual life with relationships with notables such as Elizabeth Bowen. Her concern was that readers would focus on the characters bisexuality and miss what she had to say about love which to her was the same whether it was shared as part of a gay or straight relationship. Early in Mrs. Stevens... she tells a young protegee, "Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see..." and then counsels that it doesn't matter whom one loves as long as one does. Love to Sarton is a journey of discovery, with self discovery being perhaps the greatest end to the quest.

The plot of the novel details a day in the life of the now elderly Mrs. Hilary Stevens, upper middle class American, raised in genteel remoteness but stylish parents in Boston and abroad. In early adulthood she finds herself the author of a controversial novel which she thinks is a fake and then soon after as the wife of a seemingly robust Englishman who had been ruined by the war. Later she becomes a poet of some renowned, and then a forgotten poet buried in anthologies. At the point where the novel begins, Hilary's secluded life on Cape Cod has been interrupted by a late wave of fame. Her newest volume of poems has raised interest in her again, hence on the day of the story she is to be interviewed by a pair of reporters. Her preparations for the interview have caused her to rethink her life and work, and especially the influences of some of the Muses to her art. In relief to this, she has become a mentor to a young man who is suffering from the failure of a love affair between himself and an older man.

Readers who like a pensive book about love, life and art which is long on soul though light on action are likely to enjoy this novel. As always Sarton's prose has a womanly sturdiness to it, nearly as fragrant and vivid as Colette's, an author summoned several times by Mrs. Stevens. One thing that Mrs. Stevens insists on is that woman writers must retain their femininity.

I found Mrs. Stevens oddly similar to John Updike's Seek My Face. The similarity was so striking that midway through I sought out my volumes of Updike's reviews and essays to see if at any point he mentioned Ms. Sarton's novel. I found little mention of Sarton at all. Odd since they have a great deal in common. ( )