True Minds

The books Impediments, Alteration and True Minds comprise The Sonnet Trilogy. Women’s liberation, the sexual revolution and the struggle for racial justice changed life in America and Europe. The six who first appeared in Impediments, three Swiss, three American, three men, three women, coming of age in the 1950s and maturing in the 1960s, were not immune. They had among them so far nine marriages and four divorces, and who is to say they were done? We know the end of only one story, that of Jack Dumondville (one divorce, two marriages) which ended in Alteration. In True Minds the stories of the other five are completed as well. With maturity, sex was arguable less an issue, but the tension between love and ambition remained. For Lily, there was the also the gap between her race and culture and that of her husband Gerard and his family in Switzerland. Where would they live? Would it be together? What about work? What of children? Now Lily tells us of these things and of the difficult childhood that shaped her.