Molotovs and Curlers

Although there are hundreds of heroic, celebratory accounts of the “formidable” Sixties and Seventies, it always seemed something was missing. There was a glaring absence that cast a haze of unreality over those stories. Women’s voices were missing; that other “half of the sky” who lived through ’68, first amidst mimeograph machines, the entourages of minor male leaders, men itching for a fight, and later through feminist uprisings and consciousness-raising groups.

In this formative novel, the ironic and curious voice of a young woman from that era recounts running away from home, crushes on handsome revolutionaries, bitter awakenings, brawls with fascists, exhausting and smoke-filled meetings on political lines, as well as the “journey” to the working class and the return to “petty-bourgeois” intimacies, female friendships, and the many other adventures of that extraordinary time.

In contrast to the grim, delusional tales of the Red Brigades that too often dominate recollections of that era, it is refreshing to hear a laughable and irreverent account of a unique time in history from the point of view of a woman who has long abandoned ideology.