This novel about a woman who was driven by money, and her 
We follow Celia, her mother Sophie, and her two daughters, Estelle and Ann, as they travel through life and are impacted by the great depression, World War II and other events large and small. Celia married to a wonderful man, Henry, experienced love and great sex, mothered Estelle, and had a charmed life for a short time. Then she lost her companion, her one real love, to cancer.
The rest of her life she struggled to stay floating and survive – concerned above all with The Money God. She seemingly lost the ability to love, abused the children of her next husband as well as the child she eventually had with him – Ann, and made people miserable left and right.
Livingston’s story is unsettling, frank, explicit, and quite interesting. It is a tale of hurt and suffering, sex and lust, abuse, violence and guilt, told in a relatively quiet, neutral language. The Money God is not an exceptionally great book, but well enough written to be worthwhile reading. It deals with the problems of survival and daily life in the beginning and middle of the last century when women were not expected to take an education and support themselves, depended totally on their husbands, yet felt the need for security and were responsible for providing for their children. It is a strong tale of the plight of women in a bygone era, and reminds us of the problems associated with that way of arranging life that I think it is good for us to be reminded about.
and 
.
