I read a review of this book in Newsweek or whereever when it came out in 1977 and thought that it sounded interesting. I decided to wait until the paperback came out.
But I never saw the paperback edition (if any). Meanwhile, I started noticing that several critics mentioned it in the course of reviewing other books. So that made me more interested, and I started looking in libraries, but I never found it.
For more than 15 years, whenever I went into a bookstore, used or new, I looked in the fiction section under D, in the hopes of finding this book, but I never did. I never went so far as to contact an out-of-print book agency, but I started thinking that it must be some sort of underground inaccessible cult classic, impossible to find copies of.
Then last summer (1994) I finally came across a copy in a very ordinary small bookstore in San Francisco, on California Street next door to the Lumiere Theatre. And two weeks later I found another book by Sara Davidson, called Friends of the Opposite Sex, in Forrest Books near the 16th Street BART Station.
After I read Loose Change, I realized that maybe my mistake had been looking in the fiction section. A lot of bookstores might classify it under Sociology or maybe Biography. It's hard to know quite what to call it, because it's the author's account of herself and three women friends of hers, from the time that she knew them in the Sixties, through most of the Seventies. The names of these women have been changed, and their stories have been put into fictional form, and yet the accounts are essentially factual. The book includes numerous photographs of key scenes from the Sixties, although the photographs don't show the actual women who are the subject of the book. (Note: The photographs on the link indicated here are by Robert Altman -- the Rolling Stone photographer, not the moviemaker -- and not taken from Sara Davidson's book.)
After I read this, I realized that this was more than just an important novel. This is a key document of the Sixties and (perhaps more so) the Seventies. So even though I had read it while still in San Francisco, and it was in hardcover and thus a nuisance to pack, I brought it back on the plane to Honolulu with me. I want to read it again sometime soon, and then I will give it to somebody as a present. But I want to make sure that the person I give it to is somebody special, somebody who will appreciate it. Because this book is something rare and special that, for me anyway, has a very special meaning.
Addendum, June, 1997: Loose Change has just been republished in paperback at $14.95 by the University of California Press. I don't know how widely it will be distributed, but I recommend that everyone look for it. As I've indicated above, I consider this not just a novel, but an important document in the history of life in the Sixties and Seventies. I think that it might be useful recommended reading for some courses in contemporary history, sociology, or American Studies. (Some instructors in Women's Studies might also consider it relevant, although for my part, I am annoyed the attitude that a book which happens to be about women would not be of interest to men. This book is of interest to all of us, male or female, who care about the enormous social changes that occurred in this nation during the Sixties.)